


Laughter Lines

by gammadolphin



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Slow Build, Steve and Bucky suck at communication, Tony Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:12:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 100,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammadolphin/pseuds/gammadolphin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes is a rising Hollywood star with a tragic past and a reputation for driving his bodyguards away. Steve Rogers is a veteran with the same tragic past and the need to get back out in the world. The two of them have been estranged since they were teenagers, so when Steve joins SHIELD as a bodyguard, he is less than thrilled when he finds out that Bucky is his first assignment. But how bad can it be? They're both professional adults, right?</p><p>Wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone. I have discovered a passion for modern stucky AUs, so here is my contribution to the genre. I should point out that I have very little knowledge of how both Hollywood acting and private security work, so artistic liberties have been taken.
> 
> Title is from the Bastille song of the same name. This story used to be called _I'll See You in the Future When We're Older_ , but that was too much of a mouthful, so I changed it.

_I’ll see you in the future when we’re older_  
_and we are full of stories to be told._  
_Cross my heart and hope to die,_  
_I’ll see you with your laughter lines._

*****

Bucky knew he was in trouble when Phil came to visit him at his house. His bodyguard was dressed in the usual crisp suit that made him look deceptively bland, but there was an odd mix of emotions in his usually impassive eyes.

“I’m positive I gave you the week off,” Bucky told him, even as he was standing aside to let him inside.

“You did, which is why you should be flattered that I’m taking up my personal time to come see you,” Phil replied, but his heart didn’t seem to be in his usual snark.

“Something wrong?” Bucky asked as he led him into the sitting room.

Despite his rapidly growing fame, Bucky had not been in the acting business long enough to accumulate the stupid amounts of wealth that some of his peers possessed. His house in Hollywood was modest, as far as they went, but it was perfectly comfortable. Bucky didn’t need anything fancier. Phil sighed as he sat down in an armchair.

“I hope not,” he said, studying Bucky carefully. “Not for me, certainly.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.” Bucky had been going for a light tone but he missed by a mile. Phil was one of the steadiest presences in his life, and he wasn’t sure how well he would be able to handle whatever his bodyguard was about to tell him.

“Audrey said yes.”

Bucky had been expecting bad news, so that took him a moment to process. Then he smiled, honestly happy for his friend. Phil wasn’t one to show a lot of emotion, but the love he felt for his cellist girlfriend was glaringly obvious to anyone who knew him.

“Congratulations, man,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d get around to popping the question. Glad it was before either of you started going grey. It was too late for your hairline though, but I guess that wasn’t a deal breaker. I’d better be getting an invite to the ceremony.”

“Of course,” Phil said, and though there was genuine happiness in his smile, a trace of worry lingered in his eyes. “It will be in Portland. Where I’ll be living.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Bucky understood why Phil was being so serious, even more so than usual. He felt oddly hollow. “You’re leaving me, aren’t you?”

“Audrey’s life is in Portland,” Phil said gently. “I’m the one who’s always been transient. It makes the most sense for us to settle down there. And I wouldn’t be able to give you the protection you deserve, or be the husband Audrey deserves, if I tried to stay on as your bodyguard.”

“You don’t have to explain to me, Phil, I understand” Bucky said, and he really did. But that didn’t make this any less of a blow. “And I really am happy for you. Just can’t say I’m all that happy for me.”

Phil smiled sadly.

“I’m glad I’ve been able to help you, this past year,” he said. “I’ve really come to enjoy working with you.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Bucky snorted, only a little bitter. “I put you through hell.”

“Only at the beginning, and I could take it.”

That was an understatement. Bucky had done his level best to get rid of Coulson the way he had all of his previous bodyguards, but the man’s tenacity was something for the record books. Once Bucky had been forced to admit that he couldn’t get him to leave, he had settled into a grudging respect that slowly turned into a solid friendship. Bucky couldn’t even begin to hope that his next bodyguard would be on the same par.

“SHIELD will find someone good for you,” Phil promised, using the uncanny mind-reading abilities that he always denied having. “They’re the best private security agency there is, and Director Fury knows how… _challenging_ it can be to find a suitable match for you. He’ll put a lot of thought into the choice.”

“He probably hates me by now,” Bucky said, amused despite himself. “I made the guy before you cry.”

“You’re not his favorite person,” Phil admitted dryly. “But frankly he could use someone keeping him on his toes.”

“Well, that I can do.”

Phil’s lips twitched, threatening a smile, but then he sighed, growing more serious.

“Please at least try to give the new person a chance, whoever it ends up being,” he said. “For your sake as well as theirs. You deserve to have someone looking out for you, James.”

Bucky looked down, staring at the metal fist clenched loosely in his lap. Coulson was wrong, but it wasn’t worth fighting with him about it. Not when they apparently had so little time left together.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Phil sighed again, but seemed to know that was the best he was going to get. He stood, and Bucky walked him back to the front door. They shook hands.

“Thank you, Phil,” Bucky said sincerely. “For everything. And congratulations again. You deserve this, buddy.”

Phil smiled, bright and happier than Bucky had ever seen him. The actor wondered idly if anyone would ever look that happy thinking about him. It was doubtful.

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” Phil said. “Be good until then, will you?”

“Like a little angel.”

Phil rolled his eyes and shook his head, but didn’t bother saying anything else. He clapped Bucky on the shoulder, and left. Bucky watched him walk to his car, already brainstorming ideas to get rid of the new guy. Water guns full of lube had been pretty effective that one time, but he might have to get more creative…

*****

Steve’s footsteps sounded loud in his ears as he walked across the spacious and mostly-empty lobby. He reached up reflexively to straighten his tie, feeling self-conscious and out of place. It wasn’t like he didn’t know how to handle himself in fancy places like this, but he had never really felt comfortable in them, despite his brother’s best efforts. Still, he walked up to the massive glass desk in the middle of the atrium and waited for the woman sitting behind it to look up from her computer.

“Can I help you?” she asked, cool and professional.

“I have an appointment with Nick Fury.”

“And your name is?”

“Steve Rogers.”

The woman checked her computer and nodded. She gave him instructions to Fury's office, and then got back to work, not sparing him another glance. Steve squared his shoulders and walked toward the elevator that she had indicated, his pulse slightly elevated.

 _Don't be stupid, Rogers,_ he told himself sternly. _You've faced enemy insurgents; you can face a simple job interview._

But as he padded down the hall to the largest office on the top floor, he couldn’t help but wish he _were_ heading into combat. At least he knew how to handle himself in a war. He couldn’t say the same about the interview he was about to walk into. But he needed this job, and he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. So he strode into the office and was directed by yet another receptionist to a large glass door with _Nicholas J. Fury_ frosted on its surface.

He took one last deep breath, cleared his throat, and rapped on the door. The man sitting behind the desk on the other side looked up, and some of Steve’s nerves eased. It wasn’t that Fury had a comforting demeanor -- just the opposite, actually -- but he was clearly a veteran. It was evident in the scar visible behind the black patch covering his left eye, and the way he held himself, even sitting down. At least Steve had a sense of how to interact with veterans, considering he was one now.

“Come in,” Fury called.

Steve pushed the door open and walked up to the desk, stopping a few feet from it. Fury stood to examine him, saying nothing as his gaze swept over every inch of his figure. Steve held himself high and straight, used to this kind of inspection. After a long moment, Fury crossed his arms and spoke.

“The only reason you're here is that Natasha Romanoff vouched for you personally. I don't usually like taking chances on new and inexperienced people, but she says you're worth the risk. That true?”

Steve blinked, surprised by the blunt directness.

“I know better than to question Natasha, sir,” he said, keeping his gaze focused straight ahead.

Fury snorted and uncrossed his arms.

“At ease, Rogers,” he said, sinking back into his chair. “You're here because you _left_ the military, remember?”

“I guess old habits die hard, sir,” Steve said, relaxing by a fraction.

“That's what I'm hoping. You've got a hell of a service record, especially for someone so young.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It wasn't a compliment, it was a statement. You were good at what you did. What I want to know is if you'll be good at what you're applying to do. How much private security have you done?”

Fury had to know the answer to that, which meant that the question was a test. So Steve met his eye and answered calmly.

“None, sir," he said. "But bodyguarding is a different story. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I was the captain of a highly specialized team, and we were often tasked with the safety of some very important people in some very dangerous environments. We never lost a single charge. Personal protection is part of what I did, sir, and like you said, I was good at it. I wouldn't take on responsibility for someone's safety unless I was absolutely certain that I could handle it.”

He held his breath once he had finished speaking, glad that his voice had remained level. His palms were prickling with sweat. He had never been one to boast, even when his claims were true, but a job interview was not the place for humility.

Fury watched him for another moment, his face impassive.

“And how do you feel about dicks?”

It was all Steve could do not to choke on his own spit.

“Sir?” he questioned, having to work a lot harder to keep his tone even. He might have imagined the smirk that crossed Fury’s face.

“A lot of the people who have the need and means for security like this company provides are rich, entitled assholes,” he explained. “They’re rude, reckless, and will treat you like their own personal manservant, instead of a highly trained specialist. Are you prepared to deal with that?”

Steve considered it. The prospect of being treated like crap by the person he was trying to protect wasn’t exactly appealing. Still, Natasha had given him a similar warning when she suggested the job, and yet here he was.

“I’ve dealt with all kinds, sir,” he said. “I’ve got a thick skin.”

“All right then. You’ll go through three weeks of training to get you up to SHIELD standards, and then you’ll start on your first assignment.”

Steve blinked again, feeling off balance.

“Just like that?” he asked, surprised.

“What, did you wanna make small talk for a while?” Fury demanded impatiently. “I already ran all the paper checks on you, Rogers. You wouldn’t have made it into this office if you hadn’t already met every single one of my screening criteria. Now do you want a job, or have you been wasting my time?”

“No sir, I want the job,” Steve said quickly. “Thank you.”

Fury smiled for the first time, and it was terrifying.

“Don’t thank me yet, Rogers,” he warned. “You’ll be getting a trial by fire. I already know who I’ll be placing you with. He’s driven away five of my men so far.”

Steve wondered if this was why he had been offered the job so quickly. Maybe Fury was getting desperate.

“Why does he hire security if he just wants to get rid of it?” he asked.

“He doesn’t. His agent hires the guards.”

“His agent?”

“He’s an actor,” Fury said with a careless wave of his hand. “A pretty popular one, apparently. Does all that action shit that people like. You’ve probably seen him in the tabloids. James Barnes.”

Steve really did choke on his own spit then. Fury just glared at him until he could breathe again.

“You want me to guard Bucky Barnes?” Steve wheezed, his stomach suddenly feeling like it was full of lead eels.

“You got a problem with that?”

“I…”

Uh, _yeah_ he had a problem with that, but it sure as hell wasn’t one that he could explain to Fury.

“Don’t you want to start me out with someone a little less high-profile?” he tried.

Fury gave him a deeply unimpressed look.

“If I wanted to start you out with someone less high-profile, I would’ve done it,” he said. “Look, Barnes is a challenging case. Only my very best agent was able to stay long-term, but he’s not available anymore. So I need someone who’ll be a good fit. I figure Barnes has a reason to trust you, after Afghanistan, so he might not be as quick to want to get rid of you.”

Steve froze. So Fury knew about Afghanistan. And he thought it would be a _good_ thing?

“I’m not so sure about-”

“You want a job with my company?” Fury interrupted. “It’s this, or it’s nothing. I’ve got a scary French dude waiting to take your place if you’re not interested.”

Steve just stared at him. He wanted a job, of course he did, but… _Bucky Barnes?_ Was the universe being intentionally cruel to him? How on earth was he supposed to spend that much time at Bucky’s side without feeling like his heart was constantly being fed into a meat grinder? And would Bucky even accept his protection? The last time they had seen each other…

Steve suppressed a shudder at the memory that still haunted his nightmares. But the recollection also strengthened his resolve. As much as he knew it would hurt to see Bucky again, the idea of passing up the chance to make sure he was safe hurt even more.

“When do I report for training?” he heard himself ask.

“Stop by the desk on your way out. Sharon will give you the details.” Fury stood, bracing one hand on his desk and extending the other to Steve. “Welcome aboard, Rogers.”

As Steve shook his hand, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he had just gotten himself into.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha called Steve before he had even cleared the lobby.

“How’d it go?” she asked when he picked up.

“I honestly have no idea,” Steve said, still slightly stunned.

“Fury didn’t tell you whether or not you got the job?” The frown was audible in Natasha’s voice. “That’s not like him.”

“Oh no, he offered me a job. Except said job is guarding Bucky Barnes, of all people.”

There was a brief pause. Steve found himself instinctively heading for the VA, where Sam’s morning session would just be finishing up.

“You sound less than thrilled about that,” Natasha said eventually.

“Less than thrilled?” Steve snorted incredulously. “Nat, you know about my history with him.”

“I do, which is why I think this could be a good opportunity for you to sort things out with him.”

“What is there to sort out?” Steve demanded, agitated.

“Just please tell me you accepted Fury’s offer,” Natasha sighed.

“I did. I guess Sam was right about me having no sense of self preservation.”

Sam wasn’t the first person to have said that, but Steve did not want to go there.

“You know what they say about counting chickens, Steve.” Steve could hear the knowing smile in his friend’s voice, but he had no idea what she was getting at. “This might turn out better than you think.”

Steve certainly hoped so, because he didn’t think that he could stand it if it turned out worse than he feared.

“Thanks,” he told her. “I hope you’re right.”

“It’s rare that I’m not. Anyway, I’ll be back in the city in two weeks, so I’ll see you then, but right now I have to go.”

“Okay. Catch a few bad guys for me.”

“Oh, I will.”

Steve smiled slightly as the call disconnected. Natasha was in the CIA, and she was frighteningly good at her job. He had no doubt that whatever classified mission she was on right now, she would complete it successfully.

He had met the spy when she’d been assigned to help Steve’s unit with a complicated job in Volgograd, one that required the expertise of someone with intelligence training, as well as the military might that Steve and his team provided. They had worked well together, and had been teamed up for several other missions over the years. Natasha had become one of Steve’s closest friends, something for which he was exceptionally grateful. He knew that Natasha was not someone who let many people get close to her, and he was lucky to be an exception.

Natasha had been second only to Sam in helping Steve recover from the accident and its fallout. She had refused to go easy on Steve or mince her words, bullying him through physical therapy, and then later convincing him that what he needed was to get out in some kind of field. It was inaction that would drive him insane, and she claimed that she didn’t have the temperament to deal with crazy people. Of course, she also wanted him off Sam’s couch, because it put a serious crimp in her date nights with the former para-rescue.

Steve was grateful for all that she’d done for him, but he really hoped that she hadn’t just steered him into a bigger mess. He was trying to work through his existing problems, not pile on new ones. But then again, maybe Bucky was already one of his existing problems. Still, the amount of pain this whole thing had the capacity to cause…

He was relieved when he got to the VA and saw that Sam’s meeting had already ended. The counselor was just finishing stacking the last of the chairs when Steve walked in. His friend took one look at his face and declared that they would be going to their favorite coffee shop for a round of beverage therapy.

“What happened?” Sam asked as soon as they were sitting down with their usual orders. “Nat thought for sure Fury was interested.”

“He was,” Steve told him dully, his concerns having amplified in the time that he’d had to think about them. “He is. He gave me a job.”

“Then why do you look like you’ve been given a death sentence?” Sam pressed. “Are you having second thoughts? I thought you decided you were ready for this.”

“I did,” Steve rasped, taking another gulp of coffee and wishing uncharacteristically that it was something stronger. “And then I found out that Fury wants to assign me to Bucky Barnes’ protection.”

Sam stared at him in silence for a long moment, and then shook his head with a sigh.

“Well, I know I don’t have to ask whether or not you took it,” he said. “But I do have to ask if you’re sure, Steve.”

Steve looked at him, seeing nothing but concern in his friend’s warm brown gaze. He appreciated it, but it was not making this any easier, because he _wasn’t_ sure.

“He needs someone to look after him,” he said eventually. “Apparently he hates all of his bodyguards automatically anyway, so I won’t be any different.”

“And you’re sure you want to expose yourself to that? Steve, you’ve been carrying a torch for this guy since before I even knew you. You really want to spend every day with him when you know he either doesn’t remember you, or doesn’t want you around?”

“Of course I don’t,” Steve sighed, and it was only mostly true. If he was being completely honest with himself, part of him wanted to see Bucky so badly that he didn’t even care what the man’s reaction would be. “But Fury made it pretty clear that it was Bucky or no one, and you and I both know that I can’t just keep doing nothing. I need this job, Sam. I’ll just…treat him like I would any other client. If he doesn’t remember me, he doesn’t remember me, and if he hates me…well, I’ll deal with it.”

Either way, it was probably going to suck. Still, if it was what he needed to do, so be it.

Sam studied him for another moment, and then nodded.

“Well, if he ever needs his balls kicked in, you know where to find me,” he said.

Steve laughed for the first time since walking into the SHIELD building.

“I’m pretty sure that kicked-in balls are part of what I’m supposed to be protecting him from,” he told his friend. Sam just gave him a careless shrug.

“Suit yourself, Rogers.”

*****

Steve breezed his way through his SHIELD training. Like he’d told Fury, he already knew how to be a bodyguard. Sure, there were some changes that needed to be accounted for, like swapping out armed enemy soldiers for rabid fans, but the basic principles were the same. Steve had some experience with what it was like to be around a celebrity, so he understood the challenges he would be facing.

SHIELD took itself very seriously. Steve came to realize that while Bucky may have been one of their higher profile clients, he was certainly not their highest valued one, geopolitically speaking. SHIELD was the best of the best in private security, and they acted like it. They even called their people agents, which amused Sam.

“My two best friends are gonna be agents,” he’d said when he, Steve, and Natasha had met up for drinks. “I’m gonna get roped into all kinds of government conspiracies and shit.”

“You’ve been watching too many of Barnes’ movies,” Natasha told him sternly.

“Yeah, I don’t think there are too many government conspiracies centered around famous actors,” Steve added, trying not to show how much even mentioning Bucky made his heart rate elevate. As the time until the start of his job slipped away, he was getting more and more nervous. But he refused to back out. “And you know full well that Natasha would never be sloppy enough to bring her work home with her.”

“I’m glad someone appreciates my skills,” Natasha said with a pointed look at her boyfriend.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Sam laughed, raising his hands in surrender. “But do you think you could get us tickets to the _Winter Soldier_ premiere, at least?”

Steve rolled his eyes. He’d be lucky if he was still working with Bucky by the time of the premiere, much less in the position to ask him for favors.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

*****

On Steve’s last day of training, a man approached him as he was leaving the gym after his sparring session. At first glance, there wasn’t much about him that seemed noteworthy, but Steve knew better than to judge someone based on a bland appearance. Instead he noticed the way the man held himself, relaxed but professional and ready to kick into high gear at a moment’s notice. He reminded Steve of Natasha.

“You Rogers?” the man asked. Steve nodded, and the stranger held out his hand. “Phil Coulson. I guess you could call me your predecessor.”

“You’re Bucky’s bodyguard?” Steve asked, studying him even more carefully as he shook the extended hand.

“You call him Bucky,” Coulson stated, and Steve knew that he was being examined just as closely. He did his best not to shift uncomfortably.

“Er, yeah.” Steve floundered a bit, realizing that he had never heard anyone but himself refer to the actor that way. He certainly didn’t want to broadcast his history with Bucky to this man, not when it could threaten his job. “I mean, I heard that was what he liked to be called.”

“Not for a long time,” Coulson said quietly, his gaze more piercing than ever.

“Uh, right,” Steve said, surprised by the pang that went through him at the information. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that. In the meantime, I thought you should have a better idea of the situation you’re heading into.”

“Okay…”

Coulson looked at him for another moment. It was almost as unnerving as getting stared down by Natasha or Fury.

“I’m sure you know that Mr. Barnes is very much in the public eye. Believe me, I’ve seen all the tabloids you have.”

“I know that most of what those things print is complete garbage,” Steve tried to assure him.

“Most of it, yes. But all lies have a basis in truth. You have a difficult job ahead of you, Rogers.”

“I understand that. I’m ready.”

“I’m not sure you do understand. Mr. Barnes is a troublemaker, yes. It’s going to feel like you’re spending half your life at outrageous parties or standing outside a hotel room door while he enjoys someone’s company. But he’s also a veteran, and despite the face that he puts on for the public, he has PTSD.”

Steve winced, his gut twisting slightly.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he told Coulson quietly. “I know what he went through over there. It was enough to mess with anyone’s head.”

It had been more than enough to mess with Steve’s head too, but he didn’t mention that.

“I’m not telling you this so that you can pity him. I’m telling you this because you need to understand him in order to do a good job of guarding him. The reason Mr. Barnes has fought so hard to get rid of his bodyguards isn’t because he resents us. It’s because he doesn’t feel like he deserves us. More than half of his squad died in the attack that cost him his arm, and he feels personally responsible for those deaths.”

“But he didn’t – he wasn’t even in command,” Steve said, genuinely surprised this time. “How could he think it was his fault?”

“He’s never told me,” Coulson sighed. “And in the year I’ve spent guarding him, I’ve been completely unsuccessful at convincing him otherwise.”

“Wow,” Steve said, unsure with what to do with this new revelation. He wondered if he would get the chance to talk to Bucky about it.

“Yeah. Don’t let him chase you away, Rogers. There’s a good man buried in there, and he’s worth protecting.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve found himself saying, even though Coulson technically had no authority over him.

Coulson almost smiled, and reached out to shake Steve’s hand again.

“Good luck. And get into the habit of checking the insides of your shoes for superglue before you put them on.”

*****

Steve had thought that he’d outgrown the anxiety problems he’d had as a kid, but as he knocked on the door of Bucky’s agent’s office three days later, he wasn’t so sure. His heart was racing, and his stomach felt like it was trying to do some pretty complicated acrobatics. He would be seeing Bucky today, and though he’d had almost a month to get used to the idea, he still felt completely unprepared.

The office door opened, and a handsome man with short light brown hair appeared. His pale blue eyes swept Steve shrewdly for a moment, and then he nodded.

“You must be Agent Rogers,” he said, stepping back to let Steve into the office. “I’m Clint Barton.”

“Good to meet you, sir,” Steve said, shaking Clint’s hand.

The man studied him thoughtfully again, and smirked.

“This gonna be your first time meeting someone so famous?” he asked, making Steve wonder what exactly his expression looked like.

“Something like that,” he replied, forcing a smile.

“Well, don’t worry. Barnes can be a lot to deal with, but not because he thinks he’s better than everyone else. Kind of the opposite, actually.” Steve wanted to ask what exactly that meant, but Clint was still talking. “But before you meet him, I want to go over exactly what’s expected of you in this position.”

“All right.”

“As you probably know, Barnes has a movie coming out next week, which means that he’s starting a press tour, which means six weeks of promotion and premieres in different cities all over the world, which means that your life is about to get very stressful.”

Steve had to chuckle at that. As if his life hadn’t been stressful before.

“I was Special Forces, Mr. Barton,” he said. “I’m used to stress.”

“Buddy, not even Special Forces can prepare you for what it’s like to face thousands of screaming fans, all desperate for the chance to so much as make eye contact with your charge. You will need to be pushy, you will need to be constantly alert, and you will need to have the patience of a saint. Now, I’ve got people managing general security for all of Barnes’ scheduled events, but you’re the one who’s going to be glued to his side at all times. For the duration of this press tour, you’ll be spending pretty much every minute with Barnes. You’ll be driving him everywhere, escorting him to all of his interviews and conventions and whatnot, making sure each of his hotel rooms is secure before he enters, that kind of thing. You with me so far?”

Steve nodded, even though his head was reeling. He hadn’t realized just how much time he was going to have to spend around Bucky. Stupid, really, considering the position he’d signed on for.

“Good. But you’re not just protecting him from other people, Rogers. Your job is also to protect him from himself.”

Steve wasn’t sure what his face looked like just then, but it must have at least somewhat reflected what he was feeling, because Clint sighed. His professional air slipped a little, and he leaned in towards Steve, his voice dropping.

“Look, I don’t know how much you know about Barnes’ life before he started acting, but it wasn’t pretty. I’ve known the man for five years, and I know next to nothing about his childhood. He gets this haunted look in his eyes whenever anyone mentions it, so don’t. He was in the military, went through a few hellish tours, and then got kidnapped by an extremist group. He was held and tortured for almost a month before he was rescued, and he lost an arm in the process. He got into acting as a way to escape all that, but some days it works better than others. I need to know if you can handle that.”

Steve’s mouth was dry and his chest was aching. He’d known, more or less, everything that Clint had just told him, but something about the solemn look in the other man’s eyes left him deeply unsettled.

“Has he ever…I mean, he doesn’t…how bad is it?” he asked, and he didn’t think that Clint missed the way his voice shook.

“He’s never tried to off himself, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, and though his words were blunt, his tone was surprisingly gentle. “Not on purpose, anyway. But he likes to take unnecessary risks. We’ve also had to drag him to the ER a few times to get his stomach pumped because he just couldn’t make himself stop. So when I say that I need you glued to his side, I’m not exaggerating.”

“Understood.” Steve sucked in a deliberate breath, trying to regain some semblance of calm. He really hoped he wasn’t about to do more harm than good here.

Clint sighed again, and clapped him bracingly on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m telling you the worst now so you’re not surprised, but it’s rarely that bad. He’s got issues, sure, but he’s a good guy; way better than a lot of the people I’ve had to work with over the years. Just keep an eye on him, don’t let him run you off, and you’ll be fine. Oh, and unless you’ve ever wondered what you look like with blue hair, check your showerheads before you turn the water on.”

Thanks to his brother, Steve actually did know what he looked like with blue hair, but it was not an experience he wanted to repeat. He managed a nod, and Clint opened the door again. They both walked out into the hallway, Steve falling into step behind Clint.

“You’ll be flying to New York tomorrow for a series of interviews and public appearances,” the agent said as they made their way down the hall. “You’ll pick Barnes up from his house and drive him to the airport, and that’s when you’ll really start your barnacle routine. You’ll just spend a few minutes with him today so that he can get to know you a little before you have to spend every waking moment together.”

Steve nodded, gulping when they stopped in front of a door. He took a deep breath, pulling himself together. He was a professional, and he could damn well act like it.

Probably.

*****

Bucky was lying on the uncomfortable green couch and staring blankly at the ceiling, trying not to think about how unpleasant the next several weeks were going to be. He loved acting, loved being able to shed his identity and adopt a completely new one, loved getting to pretend that he was a superhero or a master thief or a racecar driver. Acting, he was good at. It was all of the shit that went along with being an actor that he could barely stand.

Everyone wanted something from him. They wanted to feel like they knew him, but they wanted to know the version of him that they had already created in their heads. He was paraded in front of screaming crowds, lights flashing and cameras shoved in his face until he had to resist the urge to start throwing punches.

And that was just with the ones that liked him. It felt like people shadowed his every move, waiting for him to slip up so that they could make a few bucks printing it in a tabloid. Not that it really mattered to him. He’d always been one to let things roll off his shoulders, not giving a single shit about what other people thought of him. Steve had always been the one who’d-

Bucky shut that thought down before it could develop further, but it still sent the usual stab of pain through his chest. Fifteen years later, and he still hadn’t gotten over his best friend’s death. He pressed his palms over his eyes and breathed deep, wishing that Clint didn’t know better than to let him keep alcohol in here.

He couldn’t help but wonder what Steve would have thought of the media circus that was about to unfold. Of course, Steve probably would have found the idea of Bucky being a famous actor at all highly amusing. It was something they’d joked about, when they were young and Bucky’s acting experience consisted of a few school plays. It had been a way for them to spend time together, Bucky onstage and Steve behind the curtain, working props and costumes, even as stage manager a few times. Steve had always told his friend that he had the talent to make it big, but neither of them had ever taken the words seriously. They both knew that their circumstances would never allow that kind of career.

And then Steve had died, and Bucky’s circumstances had changed. The military had been his first attempt at getting away from the misery he’d left behind, but that had gone out the window after Afghanistan, and the loss of his arm. Acting had been his next escape route, and it was working as well as could be expected. All of the guns and action, none of the actual danger.

Although apparently Clint didn’t agree with that last part. He seemed to think that Bucky was constantly about to get jumped by a psycho fan or kidnapped or something. Of course, Clint was also afraid of finding Bucky dead on a bathroom floor in a puddle of his own vomit. Which was probably fair. It was also why Bucky was here at all, in the room that was technically his office on the floor where Clint and his team worked, instead of at home trying to make the most of his last day of solitude. He had to meet his new mission -- sorry, _bodyguard_ \-- today. He had issued a personal challenge to himself to beat his best time at getting rid of whoever it was, which was two weeks.

He bit back a groan when he heard the door swing open.

“Look alive, James; I’ve got someone for you to meet,” Clint said in an irritatingly cheerful voice.

“Unless it’s a stripper, I’m really not interested,” Bucky replied, still staring at the ceiling.

He blinked when Clint’s face intruded into his line of sight.

“Stripper? No. Beautiful specimen of humanity? Yes. Come on, James; I know you know how to play nice.”

Clint had his no-nonsense face on, and Bucky knew from experience that this was’t an argument he would be winning, so he sighed and sat up. He looked toward the door, and felt like he’d taken an artillery shell to the gut.

Oh _hell_ no. This wasn’t going to work. This wasn’t going to work at _all_. Forget beating his time; Bucky vowed then and there that he would never even be in the same _room_ as this guy again.

Clint hadn’t been kidding about the specimen part. The man standing in the doorway looked uncomfortable as hell, but it didn’t detract from the fact that he was absolutely gorgeous. He was certainly built like a bodyguard; six feet tall if he was an inch, with broad, powerful shoulders and biceps that were evident even through the fabric of the dark suit that he was wearing.

It was his face though that really captured Bucky’s attention. His features were probably too strong to be called beautiful, but that was what Bucky thought of them. But it wasn’t his attractiveness that had the actor staring, his heart feeling like it had been dumped in acid. It was the familiarity. It was the way that looking at him unleashed a flood of memories of a skinny blond boy with eyes like the sky and a smile that could have melted glaciers.

Bucky could barely breathe. There was no way he was going to be able to spend the next few months in the constant company of someone who looked so much like Steve. It would be like losing him all over again every single day.

Before he could say anything to that effect, Clint gave him a stern look and said, “James Barnes, this is Agent Steve Rogers.”

_It can’t be._

Bucky’s head filled with a dull buzzing, and he was glad that he hadn’t stood up, because he was pretty sure that his legs would have collapsed under him.

Steve was dead. He’d died when he was sixteen years old.

So why were all of Bucky’s senses telling him that his childhood best friend was standing right in front of him?

_You never did see his body_.

Bucky stared at the man’s face, and unquestionably saw Steve there, in the stubborn line of his jaw, the angle of his cheekbones, the sparkling light of his beautiful blue eyes. It had filled out a little in the fifteen years since he had last seen it, but Bucky knew that face.

_It can’t be_ , his brain told him again.

_But it is_ , his eyes and ears argued. _It’s Steve_.

_Holy fucking shit_.

Bucky was sure that his mouth was hanging open, and he couldn’t bring himself to close it because _Steve Rogers was standing six feet away from him_.

Bucky got unsteadily to his feet and took a few dazed steps forward, still staring at Steve’s face. He looked…he looked perfect and strong and healthy; the exact opposite of the last time Bucky had seen him. The actor really hoped that this wasn’t a product of him finally going insane.

“I will be very annoyed if I have to replace this one, James,” Clint warned, breaking into Bucky’s whirling thoughts. “So be nice.”

As he finally began to accept that this really was Steve, alive and well, Bucky was hit with a wave of emotion so powerful he thought he was going to have to sit down again. It was more than he had any idea what to do with. Steve was alive, fine and safe, and…and standing in Bucky’s room.

_What?_ Did this mean that _Steve_ was his new bodyguard? That…changed things.

Clint cleared his throat pointedly, and Bucky realized that he hadn’t said a word since laying eyes on Steve.

“I – yeah, of course,” he said in reply to Clint’s admonition. Being nice was not going to be a problem. “I…hi, Steve.”

Bucky was still too stunned to process everything, but he smiled and took another step toward Steve, the desire to pull him into a hug almost overwhelming. When Steve looked at him though, his face was impassive and impersonal, cold, even. It stopped Bucky in his tracks.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky was more bewildered than ever. He glanced at Clint, wondering if Steve was pretending not to know him for the agent’s sake.

And then it hit him. Of course Steve wouldn’t be happy to see him. He was alive, which meant that Bucky had abandoned him with a monster. Nausea roiled in Bucky’s stomach at the realization that he’d left his best friend at the mercy of that…of course Steve hated him. No wonder he’d kept his distance from Bucky all these years.

This was just a job to him. He probably hadn’t been given a choice in the matter.

That hurt, a lot, but Bucky wasn’t going to ruin it for him. He owed Steve that much, and more.

“Uh, yeah, you too,” he forced out.

Steve just gave him the barest hint of a nod and then fixed his gaze on a point somewhere to the left of Bucky’s ear.

“Well, I can already tell you two are gonna have fun,” Clint said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, Steve will be picking you up at six tomorrow, James, and I already set every single one of your alarms, so don’t even _try_ to try to sleep in. Don’t think I won’t resort to having him go in and haul your ass out of bed.”

Steve’s gaze stayed fixed, but a hint of a flush crept into his cheeks. Bucky resolved not to subject him to Clint’s threat. He nodded.

“All right. Well, Steve and I have some stuff to go over, but you’re done for the day. You can go home and get ready for your trip.”

Bucky just nodded numbly, and the second the door closed behind Clint and Steve, his knees buckled and he collapsed back onto the couch. He dropped his head into his hands, thoughts swirling madly through his head.

_Steve is alive. He’s alive. He’s safe._

A breathless laugh escaped Bucky’s lips. He was still in disbelief. All these years, Steve’s death had been weighing on him, an unbearable burden that never left him alone, no matter how hard he tried to distract himself from it. Seeing Steve alive and healthy and built like a linebacker lifted that burden so quickly it was dizzying.

Of course, it also brought with it a whole new set of issues. The pain of Steve’s death might have been eased, but the crushing guilt was still there in full force. Bucky had left Steve alone, at the mercy of Alexander Pierce.

Who knew what the fifteen years since then had held for Steve? He looked fine now, but any number of awful things could have happened to him. There had been a deep sadness and pain hidden at the back of his eyes, and Bucky dreaded to think what had put it there.

Steve had clearly not wanted anything to do with him, and Bucky couldn’t blame him. But that didn’t change the fact that they were about to be spending a whole lot of time together. The selfish part of Bucky couldn’t help being glad about that, but if Steve was going to pretend that they were strangers the whole time…well, that was going to be tough.

He was still lost in his thoughts twenty minutes later, when the door to his room was pushed open again. He looked up quickly, but it was just Clint this time. Bucky didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

“Is everything okay, James?” Clint asked, an uncharacteristic level of concern in his voice. “I expected you to be out of here the minute I let you go.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky said, even if he didn’t know if that was true. He had more important things to worry about. “Steve, my bodyguard, what do you know about him?”

Clint studied him curiously for a moment before answering.

“Not that much,” he admitted. “He’s one of SHIELD’s newer recruits. Apparently he was the only one junior enough for Fury to bully into taking your detail.”

Bucky knew that Clint was just teasing him, but the words hurt. It was confirmation that he had been forced on Steve, who should have been allowed to keep the distance he obviously wanted.

“Okay, what is it, James?” Clint demanded when Bucky flinched. “Do you know this guy? You had one hell of a look on your face when I introduced you, but I just figured that was because he’s hot.”

“No, I-” Bucky looked down, swallowing. “I don’t know him. He just reminded me a lot of someone I did know, that’s all.”

Because if Steve wanted to pretend that they were strangers, then Bucky would do that for him. If Steve had been desperate enough for a job that he was willing to work with Bucky, then Bucky wasn’t going to make it any harder for him than it had to be.

“Okay,” Clint said, evidently willing to let the matter drop. “Well, I obviously don’t know him either, but he seems like a good guy. So try to refrain from putting crickets in his socks, will you?”

Bucky forced a grin. Little did Clint know that Steve was under absolutely no threat of being pranked. Bucky wasn’t about to give him a reason to leave.

“That was one time.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some references to past child abuse. It is very minor, but I wanted to let you know in case that's triggering for you.

_The freezing January air passed like a knife blade through Steve’s flimsy coat, making him shudder. He turned to Bucky, standing beside him on the gravel. The older boy’s dark hair was dusted with the snow swirling around them and his cheeks were red from the cold, but his eyes were bright with anticipation and exhilaration._

_“I thought you said you knew when the train was coming,” Steve complained._

_Bucky smirked and slung an arm around his thin shoulders, which helped with the cold and had the added benefit of making Steve feel safer than he did anywhere else._

_“Have a little faith, Stevie,” he said. “Any minute now.”_

_Sure enough, a low rumbling began to fill the air and the train came into sight, chugging steadily towards the two teenagers. The sight of it made the weight of their plan hit Steve with sudden new intensity._

_“Are you sure about this?” he called to Bucky over the sound of the wind and train._

_Bucky gave him another confident grin, though Steve thought he could see a hint of worry in his eyes._

_“People do this all the time,” he yelled back, which wasn’t exactly an answer. “We can’t stay with that bastard any longer, Steve, you know that. This is our best shot.”_

_Steve must still have looked dubious, because Bucky’s arm tightened around his shoulders and his earnest gaze met Steve’s._

_“Trust me?” he asked, and Steve sighed._

_“Always, Buck.”_

_Bucky gave him a warm smile, but before either of them had the chance to say anything else, the train was upon them._

_“Come on!” Bucky shouted, tugging on Steve’s arm._

_The two boys broke into a sprint. The cold air and exertion were murder on Steve’s asthmatic lungs, but he forced himself to keep going, to do his best to match Bucky’s speed as the train came up beside them._

_“Grab hold!” Bucky yelled, nudging Steve closer to the train._

_Steve eyed the metal rushing past him. They’d chosen a place where the track curved to make their illegal boarding so that the train would be going slower, but it didn’t feel even remotely slow enough. But Bucky was counting on Steve, would not make his escape without him, which meant that he had to do this. So he took as deep a breath as he could, put on an extra burst of speed, and jumped, hand stretched out to grab the steel ladder at the end of one of the cars._

_To his amazement, he actually made the leap, pulling himself into the relative safety of the somewhat-sheltered gap between the cars. He took a second to steady himself, then turned back to check on Bucky. The older boy gave him a distracted thumbs-up and then made his own jump, grabbing hold of the same ladder that Steve had used. Steve grabbed his sleeve and helped steady him. Bucky laughed, joyful and exhilarated._

_“I can’t believe we actually-”_

_He broke off with a yelp as the train rattled and jerked. He lost his footing, slipping and falling backwards. Steve cried out and made a wild grab for his arm, just barely managing to keep him from tumbling to the ground._

_Bucky was dangling precariously outside of the train car. He managed to get one foot braced on a metal bar just above the screaming wheels, and the arm that wasn’t clenched in Steve’s frantic grip was flailing for purchase on the side of the car._

_The train picked up speed and the ground beside the tracks fell away sharply, turning into a rocky gulley. A fall down that would be devastating, if it could even be survived._

_“Hang on!” Steve shouted, clinging tightly to the ladder as he tried desperately to pull Bucky back to safety._

_The train was going faster and faster, and the wind fought spitefully with Steve, tugging at Bucky. But Steve had terror and determination on his side, and he pulled with every once of strength he had. And then the train lurched again, and his friend’s arm was yanked from his grip. Bucky fell backward with a cry of surprise and fear._

_“Bucky!” Steve screamed, lunging after his friend far too late to do any good. “No!”_

_He could do nothing but cling to the ladder and watch in horror as Bucky tumbled down the steep gravelly ravine, head bashing against the rocks and leaving smears of blood in the powdery snow. Steve’s screams were lost to the wind as the train carried him farther and farther away from his friend._

_“No! Bucky! Bucky!”_

_Steve threw himself forward…_ and promptly fell out of bed.

He lay still, letting reality filter back in. He was thirty-one, not sixteen, and he was in his hotel room in LA, not on a train in the outskirts of DC. It was fall, not the middle of winter, and Bucky was fine. They were both fine, more or less.

Eventually Steve sat up with a groan, rubbing his hands over his face. He winced as his fingers brushed a spot on his cheek that had been rubbed raw by the carpet. Only he could manage to get rug burn on his face.

He rubbed his arms, trying to chase away the lingering chill of the memory. He’d been having that dream a lot ever since he found out that he would be guarding Bucky. This time had been just as awful as every other time he’d had it.

Steve stared at his hands, remembering the feeling of Bucky’s arm slipping from his grasp. He’d come so close to jumping after his friend, but the train had been going so fast that it would have been suicide for him. He still might have done it, but he knew that Bucky would never forgive him for that if he were still alive. So he’d hunched in on himself, shocked and terrified and shaking, and flung himself from the train as soon as it was going slow enough to be survivable.

He still remembered with painful clarity the way every muscle had burned and each breath felt like a knife to the lungs as he sprinted to the closest building he could find, tears dripping down his cheeks and freezing on his chin. The manager of the convenience store that he wound up in thought that he’d been attacked, and Steve lost precious minutes gasping and wheezing his way through an asthma attack before he could explain and have the man call for help.

An ambulance had been dispatched to the scene, but that was all Steve knew at the time. No one had bothered to update him, and he’d been so sure that his best friend was dead, lying at the bottom of a snowy ravine because Steve had been too weak to save him.

Steve grimaced, trying to shake off the unpleasant memories. Bucky hadn’t died that day. But then again, maybe part of him had.

_The nurse that led Steve to Bucky’s room was very kind. She kept up a stream of cheerful chatter as they walked through the halls of the pediatric ward, despite Steve’s grim silence. Her tone turned more serious when she stopped in front of a door and turned to face him._

_“Now I know your father said you could visit him,” she said, her tone making it clear that she disapproved of this decision. “But you need to understand that he won’t look the same as you remember. He was hurt very badly, and he hasn’t had much time to heal yet.”_

_“Mr. Pierce isn’t my father, ma’am,” Steve said, as politely as he could. “And I understand that Bucky’s hurt. That’s why I’m here. I need to see him.”_

_It had been a week since the accident, and Steve had not been allowed to see Bucky once. Pierce had picked him up from the convenience store and brought him home, proceeded to beat him so badly that he’d been close to needing the hospital himself, and then told him that it was his own fault that Bucky had been hurt, and he didn’t deserve to visit him. Steve had kept asking though, and eventually Pierce caved just to shut him up._

_“All right,” the nurse sighed, putting a hand on the door handle behind her. “Just be careful. You can hold his hand if you want, but try not to touch anything else. And don’t expect him to wake up for you. I’m just keeping an eye on him for today because his usual nurse couldn’t come in, but she told me that he’s been pretty out of it. He was being kept sedated until yesterday because of his head injuries, and we haven’t been able to get a full assessment of his mental state.”_

_“I understand,” Steve said again, with a touch more impatience this time._

_The nurse gave him a sad, indulgent smile._

_“He’s lucky to have you,” she told him as she opened the door at last. “A foster brother who cares so much.”_

_“If he were lucky, he wouldn’t be here,” Steve muttered as he squeezed past her and into the room._

_He stopped a few steps in, staring at the figure on the bed. Bucky looked…well, he didn’t look good, by any means, but he looked alive, and that was so much better than what Steve had feared. His head was wrapped with bandages and his features were bruised and swollen, but Steve could still see his friend through all of that. There was a reassuringly steady green line bouncing up and down on the monitor beside his bed, announcing each beat of his heart._

_Steve strode to Bucky’s bedside and stopped, feeling lost and helpless. Despite the nurse’s assurance that he could hold Bucky’s hand, he was afraid to touch his friend for fear of hurting him. Still, he couldn’t resist brushing one finger lightly over Bucky’s palm, the warmth of his skin finally convincing Steve that he was going to be all right._

_“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Steve told him softly, staring at his closed eyes. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve known it was too risky. I should never have let you…I should’ve held on tighter. Someone stronger than me could’ve pulled you back in, but I…I’m sorry.”_

_Bucky gave no response, no sign that he’d heard. Steve hadn’t been expecting anything else, but it still hurt. He swallowed hard and took Bucky’s hand gently._

_“I’m here, Buck,” he promised softly. “And I swear, I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care what Pierce does. They’re not keeping me from you again.”_

_His heart leapt as Bucky’s fingers twitched and his eyes began to flutter open. He leaned forward, watching hopefully as narrow slivers of blue appeared._

_“Hey,” he said softly, squeezing Bucky’s hand. “You with me, pal?”_

_Bucky’s eyes opened fully, squinting a little from the light in the room. His expression twisted in fear, and the machine beside him beeped as his breathing sped up._

_“Easy, Buck, it’s okay,” Steve told him, heart aching. “You’re in the hospital, but you’re gonna be fine. I’m right here.”_

_Bucky’s panicked gaze turned on him. None of the fear faded from his expression though. If anything, it intensified._

_“Who are you?” he demanded in a croaking gasp, cringing away from Steve._

_Steve flinched as if he’d been slapped and let go of Bucky’s hand immediately._

_“It-it’s me, Buck,” he stammered. “It’s Steve.”_

_“I don’t know you,” Bucky said, his face going white with pain as he tried to get his battered body further away from Steve. “What did you do to me?”_

_“You were in an accident,” Steve told him, his voice weak as horrified tears burned behind his eyes. “You fell off a train and got pretty banged up, but you’re gonna be just fine, you’ll see. I’m your friend, Buck, I’ll-”_

_“Don’t touch me!” Bucky screamed, jerking his hand away._

_Steve recoiled once more. He hadn’t even realized that he had tried to take his friend’s hand again._

_The combination of Bucky’s shout and the continued complaints of his monitors drew the attention of the nurse, and she came bustling into the room to see what all the commotion was about. Steve let her tug him gently from the room, and he watched through the tiny gap in the curtains blocking Bucky’s window as she calmed him down and checked him over._

_“What’s wrong with him?” Steve demanded as soon as she’d left the room and closed the door behind her. The look she gave him was full of enough pity to stop him cold._

_“Sweetie, how long have you known him?”_

_“Our whole lives,” Steve told her. “Since we were in kindergarten.”_

_The nurse pursed her lips, and Steve’s stomach dropped._

_“How bad is it?” he asked in a whisper._

_“The doctors are going to need to run some more tests,” she hedged. “We won’t know anything for sure until-”_

_“Please,” Steve interrupted. “He’s my best friend, and he’s…he’s all I’ve got. Please just tell me how bad you think it is.”_

_She sighed, looking like she wanted to put a hand on his shoulder. Apparently she thought better of it, and she crossed her arms over her chest._

_“He doesn’t seem to remember you at all,” she said softly. “Which isn’t a good sign for his memory, if you’ve really known him for so long. It’s possible that he could have suffered significant memory loss from the head trauma.”_

Steve had pretty much stopped listening after that. He’d walked out of the hospital in a daze and moved through the city without even knowing where he was going until it had gotten so late that he had no choice but to return to Pierce’s house. His foster father had asked about Bucky’s condition, and didn’t seem to have any reaction to the news that Bucky might have lost all of his memories.

It had been torturous for Steve to stay away from the hospital after that, but the memory of Bucky’s blind panic was enough to stop him from trying to see his friend again. He couldn’t bear to see him that upset again, especially on his behalf.

He’d done as much research as he could on memory loss, figuring out that Bucky had what was called retrograde amnesia, which meant that he couldn’t remember things that had happened before his injury. Most of what Steve had read said that it was almost never permanent though, and there was a good chance of recovering most if not all of the lost memories. He’d decided to wait until Bucky asked for him, as he surely would when he got his memories back.

The only problem was that ‘when’ became ‘if,’ and Bucky never called him or tried to find him. And then Pierce had come home one day and said that the doctors had determined that Bucky’s memory was never coming back, and that he needed to be transferred to a special psychiatric facility to get him rehabilitated for life in the world.

Steve frowned, wrapping his arms around himself as he shuddered involuntarily. That had been the hardest time of his life, losing Bucky like that. Pierce had told him that the facility didn’t allow visitors, and he kept such a close eye on Steve after the escape attempt that he couldn’t even try to find Bucky on his own.

Later, when he was finally free of Pierce, Steve had tried to track Bucky down. He’d checked every psychiatric facility in the DC metro area, and the ones that would talk to him had never even heard of a James Buchanan Barnes, much less had him as a patient. Steve could find no trace of his friend, and it was like losing him all over again.

Then Afghanistan had happened, and Steve had been rattled to the core. It had put him off from trying to make further contact with the man who had once been his entire world, even as he did what he could to help him and keep an eye on his blossoming acting career. Maintaining that distance had been one of the hardest things Steve had ever done, but he’d convinced himself that it was for the best.

And now fate had thrust them together yet again. Steve thought about yesterday’s puzzling meeting as he got dressed for his first real day on the job. Bucky had looked sickened at the sight of him, and Steve had been sure that his fears were confirmed, that Bucky hated him. But then Clint had introduced him, and Steve hadn’t been able to make any sense of the look on Bucky’s face after that. But the actor had been perfectly polite to him, hadn’t given any sign that Steve was anything but just another bodyguard, and now Steve was feeling more lost than ever. It was confirmation that Bucky didn’t remember him, and it hurt even worse than he’d been expecting.

It would make the job easier though. He’d made professional and detached work for him yesterday, and he could do it again. He knew he could. He thought he could.

He hoped he could.

*****

_The first thing Bucky was aware of was how much he hurt. Every part of him ached, and his head felt like it had been split open with a dull axe. He groaned, trying to remember what had happened._

_It came back to him in a painful rush. The train, slipping, Steve grabbing his hand but losing his grip, falling, crashing into the cold, unforgiving rocks. He knew that he was in a hospital, had the vague impression that he’d woken up before, but had no solid memories to hold onto. He blinked his eyes open, wincing when the light hit them._

_“You took quite a spill there, young man.”_

_Bucky froze, his battered muscles screaming as they tensed. He knew that voice, and every fiber of his being shied away from it instinctively. His panicked eyes swept the room until they found the only other person in it, the person Bucky hated more than anyone in the world._

_Pierce. Pierce was here. Their attempt at escape had been for naught. Pierce was here, and Steve wasn’t, and everything was wrong wrong wrong._

_“Steve,” he murmured, because his friend had been with him on the train and he wasn’t there now and Bucky was terrified of what that meant._

_Pierce smiled, and Bucky shuddered. Pierce only smiled when he was about to inflict pain._

_“You know, I must admit my feelings are a little hurt,” he said conversationally, sitting back in his chair beside the bed and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ve been nothing but good to you, James, and yet you risked your life to spurn my hospitality.”_

_Bucky glowered at him, not bothering to dignify that with a response. Not that he could have formed one anyway, with how his brain felt._

_“But let it not be said that Alexander Pierce is a cruel man,” Pierce went on. “If you don’t want to stay with me, I certainly won’t make you. You’re a ward of the state now, son, at least for the next few months.”_

_He made as if to stand, but Bucky reached out with monumental effort and grabbed his sleeve. It wasn’t something he would normally have dared to do, but these were desperate circumstances._

_“I’m not…letting you keep…Steve,” he forced out through clumsy lips. If the soreness of his throat was any indication, there had been a breathing tube jammed down it at some point. “You understand? Don’t care…what I have to do. I’m not leaving him…with you.”_

_Pierce shook his head, mock sadness and sympathy on his features._

_“James, I’m hurt by the implication that Steve wouldn’t be safe with me,” he said. “Especially when it was you who got him killed.”_

_Bucky’s world ground to a halt as his muddled brain struggled to process what Pierce had just said._

_“What?” he choked out._

_Pierce smiled again, cruel and sadistic._

_“Well you didn’t think that weak little Steve would be able to hang onto that train when even you couldn’t, did you?” he asked. “He fell right after you did. Probably trying to save you, knowing him. But a fall that was just barely survivable for you, for him…he was dead before the paramedics even got to the scene. For someone who claims to care about him so much, you were awfully careless with his life.”_

_“No,” Bucky gasped, the denial leaving his lips in a desperate huff as his breathing sped with fear and ice flooded his veins. “You’re lying.”_

_“Oh, but I’m not.” Pierce leaned forward, his cold eyes boring into Bucky’s. “Where is he, huh? You think anything short of hospitalization or death would keep that sap from you? Ask the nurses; no one was brought in with you. That’s because your precious Stevie got a direct ride to the morgue.”_

_“No,” Bucky said again, more of a plea this time, as his eyes did another frantic search of the room, as if expecting Steve to pop out of a corner and prove that Pierce was lying._

_But there was no sign of his friend, no sign that he had ever been there at all, and Bucky knew that Pierce was right about the fact that nothing would have stopped Steve from visiting. Nothing except…_

_The machines around Bucky began to wail as the panic set in, sending his heart rate skyrocketing and making it impossible for him to breathe. Pierce leaned even closer, looming over Bucky, breath hot on his bruised skin._

_“You killed your friend, Barnes,” he hissed in Bucky’s ear. “Because you were too selfish to live without him. You killed him, and now you are well and truly on your own. Congratulations. Enjoy your new freedom.”_

_He straightened and gave Bucky one last contemptuous glance before striding from the room. Bucky stared after him, horror pinning him in place._

_It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t._

_He tried to sit up, to do what he wasn’t sure, but two nurses bustled in, alerted by the alarms from his monitors. They pushed him back down._

_“You have to lie still, honey,” one of them told him in what she probably thought was a soothing tone. “You hurt yourself pretty bad, and you’re gonna need to take it easy for a while, but you’re gonna be just fine.”_

_But Bucky couldn’t lie still, because she was wrong; he wouldn’t be fine, not if Steve was…_

_“Please,” he gasped, grabbing her arm. “Please, just tell me; was anyone brought here with me? A boy my age?”_

_She pursed her lips, seeming to understand how important the answer was to him._

_“No, dear,” she said gently. “You came in alone.”_

_“Has anyone else come to visit me?” he asked. He was gripping her arm so tightly that his muscles hurt, and she eyed him with concern. Of course, the concern might have had something to do with the fact that he was practically hyperventilating._

_“No, dear,” she said again. “Just Mr. Pierce.”_

_“Oh god,” Bucky moaned, trying to sit up again. They forced him back down, and he lashed out. “No!” he screamed._

_Didn’t they understand? He didn’t care if he hurt himself further. There was nothing in the world that could hurt him more than losing Steve. If that had happened…_

_“No! I have to – I have to…”_

_He didn’t know what he had to do, but he did know that he couldn’t just lie there, not when Steve was gone._

_The other nurse jabbed a syringe into Bucky’s IV line. It must have contained some kind of sedative, because his body went numb and unresponsive. He felt himself slipping away, but even drug-induced unconsciousness could not provide relief, escape from the knowledge that he’d killed his best friend, the boy he loved._

Bucky woke up with tears on his cheeks, the way he always did after having that dream. Even fifteen years later, the pain of that moment had not faded. In fact, it had intensified. Because at the time, he hadn’t been certain that Steve was dead, but as days stretched into weeks into months into years without any sign of him, any trace of hope that he’d managed to cling to had been ground out of him.

It took Bucky a moment to remember the day before, remember the man that Clint had ‘introduced’ him to. He sat up so fast it made him lightheaded. Surely that hadn’t been a dream as well. Surely his subconscious wasn’t that cruel. He scrabbled for his phone on the nightstand. Clint answered on the fifth ring.

“Is this payback for me making you leave your house at six?” the agent asked blearily. “Because if so-”

“You introduced me to my new bodyguard yesterday, right?” Bucky interrupted urgently.

“Jeez, what is it with you and that guy, James?” Clint groaned. “You already gave me the third degree about him yesterday. What are you trying to do, scope out his weaknesses? Because you know I refuse to be complicit in your schemes.”

Hope began to swell in Bucky’s chest.

“Just…just tell me his name again, please?” he requested in a whisper, holding his breath as he waited for the answer.

“Steve Rogers.”

Bucky almost dropped the phone in relief. It hadn’t been a dream.

“James?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Bucky heard himself say. “Sorry for waking you up so early.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Clint sighed. “Who needs sleep anyway, right? But you’re all right, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m…I’m good, Clint. I’m great.”

“Fantastic. Well, behave yourself on the tour, if you think you can manage it. Try not to give the new guy too rough of an introduction.”

“I’ll be a little saint,” Bucky promised absently. “Thank you, Clint. Really.”

He hung up before Clint could say anything else, and then just sat in the semidarkness of his bedroom for a moment. The tears from his dream still lingered on his face, and he wiped them away, letting out a little incredulous laugh.

Steve was alive.

Bucky glanced at the digital clock beside his bed, grimacing when he saw the time. It was 3:30 AM. No wonder Clint hadn’t been thrilled. It also meant that Bucky had to wait another two and a half hours before it would be time for Steve to pick him up. He knew there was no way he would be falling back to sleep though, not with the anticipation that was buzzing through him.

He checked to make sure that he had everything packed, put his bag by the front door, and then got dressed in his travel clothes and made himself a cup of tea. This left him with nothing else to do and a two hour and fifteen minute wait. That was when the nerves really began to set in. Beyond the fact that Steve was alive, he in no way understood the situation, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

Steve had acted like he’d never seen Bucky before in his life, but that might have been for Clint’s benefit. But if Bucky was being honest with himself, it probably wasn’t. Bucky had been living an exceptionally public life for the last few years; it wouldn’t have been that hard for Steve to get in touch with him if he wanted to, which meant that he didn’t. And while Bucky couldn’t begrudge him that, it was going to make working with him a little difficult.

He resolved to go along with Steve’s wishes. If that still meant pretending that they’d met for the first time yesterday, then that was what he would do. He was an actor, after all, and he could treat this like another role. He would play the version of Bucky who had never met a tiny spunky blond kid on a kindergarten playground, who hadn’t grown up with the best guy on the planet, who hadn’t had his heart stolen by his best friend.

Just another role. Right.

Bucky almost jumped out of his skin when the doorbell rang at exactly six. He tried to take a deep breath, even as he was sprinting towards the entryway. Steve was standing there like a living miracle when he opened the door, and Bucky couldn’t help just staring at him for a moment, drinking in the sight. Then he noticed the scrape on Steve’s cheek, which had definitely not been there the day before. His hands clenched automatically, itching to punch whoever had hurt his friend.

And then he reminded himself that Steve was a grown man, and that Bucky had lost the right to defend him a long time ago.

“Good morning, Mr. Barnes,” Steve said, as stiff as he’d been yesterday. It hurt as much as it had yesterday too.

“Please, you don’t have to…” Bucky sighed. He’d promised himself that he would go along with what Steve wanted, and apparently Steve still wanted to pretend that they were strangers. “Morning, Steve.”

“Are you ready to go?”

Bucky nodded and reached down to grab his bag. Steve beat him to it though, knocking his hand away from the handle and grasping it himself. Bucky snatched his hand back, feeling the warmth from Steve’s touch lance up his arm. Steve didn’t seem to notice; he just rolled the suitcase to the car and loaded it into the trunk without another glance at the actor.

Bucky did his best to shrug that off as he set his alarm and locked the door before following Steve to the car. He couldn’t resist getting into the passenger seat. Steve shot him a brief, confused look, but said nothing.

Bucky lasted about five minutes.

“So, who had the misfortune of getting into a fight with you?” he asked, forcing his voice to be casual.

“What?” Steve asked, some of his stiffness fading into surprised confusion.

“Your face.” Bucky gestured at the raw patch. “And don’t tell me you cut yourself shaving. You would’ve had to be shaving with a rusty knife.”

“Oh.” Steve’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, and his shoulders hunched. He had an odd look on his face. “No, it wasn’t a shaving accident, but it wasn’t a fight either. It’s carpet burn. I, uh, fell out of bed.”

“And you broke the fall with your face?” Bucky asked, eyebrows raised. He tried very hard not to think about what Steve might have been doing in his bed that made him fall out of it in the first place.

Steve didn’t answer. His eyes were dark, haunted, and they darted to Bucky’s face for a split second before returning to the road.

Bucky frowned, but didn’t push him. What right did he have to ask Steve personal questions? Still, it hurt to be this close to him and still feel like they were strangers.

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the airstrip, where a small private plane was waiting for them with the steps already down. Steve beat Bucky to his suitcase again, pulling it from the trunk along with a smaller one that must have belonged to him.

“Steve, come on,” Bucky protested. “I’m an actor, not an invalid. I can carry my own suitcase.”

Bucky might have imagined Steve’s slight flinch, but he didn’t think so. He felt like he should apologize, but he didn’t know what he would be apologizing _for_ , because he still didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

Steve just wordlessly passed over the suitcase. Their hands didn’t touch this time, and Bucky couldn’t help wondering if that was deliberate.

He tried to follow Steve onto the jet, but the taller man stopped him with a look.

“What?” Bucky asked.

“I need to clear the plane, Mr. Barnes,” Steve said, as if that should have been obvious.

The ‘Mr. Barnes’ hit Bucky like a slap to the face, reminding him once again that Steve was only there to do a job.

“Okay,” he said quietly, even though he thought it highly unlikely that any threats were onboard the plane, because he was a moderately well known actor, not the damn president. “Whatever you have to do.”

Steve gave him a strange look, confused and searching, before turning his back on Bucky and boarding the plane. A few minutes later, he poked his head back out.

“Jeez, Buck,” he said. “You don’t do things halfway, do you?”

The teasing familiarity hit Bucky as powerfully as the cold indifference had, leaving him breathless. This was the Steve he’d lost, the one who had been his best friend, the one he’d missed with every fiber of his being. His face must have looked strange, because Steve’s mask shuttered back into place.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The plane is clear, Mr. Barnes. You can board.”

Bucky mentally kicked himself. Steve had finally started acting normal, and Bucky had just gaped like an idiot.

“No, it’s okay,” he told Steve, following him into the luxurious cabin. “Really, Steve. You don’t have to treat me like the Queen of England or anything. I’m still…”

He trailed off. He’d been going to say ‘I’m still just your friend,’ but obviously that wasn’t what Steve wanted from him. And though he had put a considerable amount of thought and effort into driving away his previous bodyguards, that was the last thing he wanted for Steve.

“Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” he said instead, glancing around the opulent cabin. “Don’t get used to it though. I usually fly commercial. This is a rental. It’s just a bribe from Clint to kick off the press tour. He doesn’t trust me to behave myself.”

“He did mention something along those lines,” Steve said, looking faintly amused despite himself.

“Oh god, what did he tell you?” Bucky groaned. “You know what? Never mind. “I don’t want to know.”

Steve actually smiled then, but the expression faded almost instantly as he seemed to catch himself. He crossed to the opposite end of the cabin and sat down, pulling a book from his bag.

Bucky stared after him, more confused than ever. He’d been operating under the assumption that Steve hated him, but that really wasn’t the vibe he was getting now. It was like Steve was forcing himself to stay distant, and Bucky had no idea why.

Maybe he really had lied about not knowing Bucky to get the job as his bodyguard? But there would be no reason for him to do that. Clint would probably be glad about their history, since it meant that Bucky would be far more cooperative with him.

But that still left Bucky with no idea why Steve was acting like they’d never met. Of course, he had missed out on fifteen years of Steve’s life, so who knew how much he’d changed since then. Bucky certainly wasn’t the same kid who had tried to run away with his best friend all those years ago.

Bucky found himself wanting to know all about those years. He wanted to get to know the man that his foster brother had grown into. And if Steve wanted to pretend they were strangers, fine. Strangers could talk to each other, couldn’t they?

So Bucky followed Steve to the back of the plane and sat down in the plush seat right across from him. Steve looked up from his book, his expression startled and just the slightest bit wary.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.

Bucky sighed. This wasn’t off to a good start.

“You’re my bodyguard, Steve, not my butler,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you. We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together, so we might as well get to know each other.”

Bucky couldn’t make sense of the look that passed over Steve’s face. It was a strange combination of surprise and hope and something like pain. He set his book down and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, all right,” he said.

He didn’t say anything else though, leaving Bucky to get the conversation going. He cast about for an innocent topic to start with.

“So, how long have you been a bodyguard?” he asked.

Steve pulled a face and glanced at his watch.

“Uh, about an hour and a half.”

“Seriously?” Bucky laughed.

“Don’t worry though,” Steve said hastily, as if afraid that Bucky would think him incompetent. “I still have a lot of experience protecting people.”

And god, did Bucky know that. Steve had been protecting people since long before he’d had the build or skills to do so. But somehow he didn’t think that was what Steve was talking about.

“So what did you do before-”

Bucky broke off as the plane lurched into motion. Not because there was anything unusual about that, but because of the way Steve’s face had gone pale and his hands gripped his armrests as if his life depended on it.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Steve grimaced and seemed to shake himself. His grip on the armrests slackened slightly.

“Yeah,” he said, and Bucky remembered him well enough to know that he was lying. “Yeah, I was just startled, that’s all.”

Bucky studied him. Steve was staring resolutely at a spot on the floor. It looked like he was taking deliberately deep breaths.

“You’re afraid of flying,” Bucky said, surprised but sure that he was right.

Steve looked up at him sharply.

“I’m fine,” he snapped. “It doesn’t mean I can’t do my job.”

“What? No, I didn’t mean it like that at all, Steve, I swear. I’m just surprised, that’s all. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who’s scared of much.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve muttered, looking down again. “We’ve all got those little things that get to us.”

Hoping that he wasn’t about to upset this weird balance between them, Bucky leaned forward and put his hand on Steve’s knee. A light flush crept up the man’s neck, but he made no attempt to pull away.

“Yeah, we do,” Bucky said gently, once Steve was looking at him. “You should’ve told me that flying bothered you.”

“What would you have done about it?” Steve sighed, sounding more resigned than angry now. “Taken a bus to New York so that we wouldn’t have to fly?”

Bucky wanted to say that yes, he would have, but he strongly suspected that Steve wouldn’t believe him.

“Well, maybe not, but I certainly would’ve insisted that Clint have some booze put on this plane,” Bucky said.

Steve smirked at him.

“And whose benefit would that have been for?”

“You wound me, Rogers.”

Steve actually laughed, and the sound went straight to Bucky’s heart. It had been so, so long since he’d heard Steve laugh. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed the sound. It was a little deeper now, but no less beautiful than it had been when they were teenagers.

But then the plane was actually taking off, and Steve stopped laughing abruptly, his face draining of blood again. He turned faintly green.

“Hey,” Bucky said, squeezing his knee gently. “It’s gonna be fine. Just breathe through it, buddy. Don’t hurl in the fancy rental plane, or Clint will kill us both.”

As he’d hoped, his words drew a faint smile from Steve.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’d protect you. Kind of what I’m here for.”

“I’m not sure you realize how scary Clint can be. I’ve seen him make grown men cry.”

“Guess I’d better get a grip then,” Steve sighed.

He took a few deep breaths, and did seem to grow a little steadier as the plane reached cruising altitude and leveled off. His gaze fell to Bucky’s hand, which was still on his knee, and his expression faltered. Bucky realized that it was the metal one, and retracted it immediately.

“Sorry,” he muttered, shoving the hand in his pocket. “It freaks a lot of people out the first time.”

And Bucky was usually so much more careful. He didn’t go around grabbing people with it, especially when they were already freaking out.

“No, it’s–it’s okay,” Steve said, but his troubled expression said otherwise. “I was just wondering if it hurt.”

Bucky studied him for a moment. He didn’t seem disgusted, but he still had an odd look on his face.

“Only when I poke myself in the eye with it,” he said eventually, opting for the light answer instead of the serious one. “That happened a lot, when I was still getting used to it. I would go to brush my hair out of my face and wind up almost blinding myself.”

“That must have been frustrating.”

Bucky shrugged.

“It’s fine now. I barely notice it most of the time. It aches a little when it’s cold, or when I get too tense, but otherwise it might as well be my old arm.”

That wasn’t quite true. As hard as Tony had worked on the sensors, and as cutting edge as the technology was, Bucky still couldn’t feel everything the way he used to. He could feel temperature and pressure, and it was more than enough, so much better than most prosthetics, but it was just not the same.

“I’m glad,” Steve said, and he really seemed to mean it.

Bucky smiled at him, relaxing a little. He left his hand in his pocket though.

“You never did answer my question,” he said.

“You never finished asking your question,” Steve shot back with a cheeky smile.

“What did you do before you became a bodyguard?” Bucky asked, rolling his eyes. Steve still had his attitude then. The realization was oddly reassuring. Whatever else had happened to him, it hadn’t stolen his spirit.

“I was in the army.”

Bucky blinked, surprised, because yeah okay, Steve was huge and muscular now, but he had been so small for so long that Bucky had never even considered the military as an option for him. The idea of his friend in the army, facing some of the kind of horrors that Bucky himself had faced, sent a chill through him. He thought back to the old nightmare that had been haunting him since his ordeal in Afghanistan, and had to suppress a shudder.

“Spend much time overseas?” he asked, hoping to cover his pause.

Steve nodded, and his expression had gotten weird again. He was staring at Bucky with an intensity that should have made him uncomfortable, but really just made him curious.

“Yeah,” Steve said after a moment. “I was Special Forces, so I did my share of traveling.”

Bucky let out a low whistle.

“Wow, I’m honored,” he said. “I really am being guarded by the best.”

Steve said nothing, his expression still strange. Bucky wondered if Steve was suffering from any of the issues that still plagued him, even after being out of the military for five years.

“What made you decide to get out?” he asked carefully.

Steve let out a low, humorless chuckle.

“I was in a plane crash.”

Bucky froze in his seat. No fucking wonder Steve didn’t like flying.

“ _Shit_ ,” he hissed. “Steve, why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

“Same reason as before. Bus to New York, remember?” He took in Bucky’s expression, and sighed. “Seriously, it’s fine. I don’t like it, but I can handle it. Besides, the odds of me being in another plane crash are astronomical. You’re probably safer with me on board.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

“Is this the first time you’ve been on a plane since then?” Bucky asked, fighting to keep his voice even.

“Well, I was medevaced back to the States as soon as I was stable enough to transport, but I was unconscious for that. Since then, the only flight I’ve been on besides this one was two days ago, when I flew from DC to LA.”

Bucky sat back, stunned and staring. It sounded like Steve had damn near _died_ , and he was saying that it was nothing? And this was the second time he’d gotten on a plane because of Bucky in less than a week.

“Christ, Steve,” he said at last. “I’m sorry.”

Steve shrugged.

“I survived,” he said. “Better than I was expecting at the time.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that. He was filled with equal parts relief and guilt. Relief that Steve was all right now, and guilt that Bucky had played no part in that.

“I’m really glad you’re all right, Steve,” he said quietly.

The words didn’t feel like enough, but they were true. Bucky should have been there for Steve, and not just after his plane crash. He should have looked for Steve the second he got out of the hospital after the train incident, instead of running straight to the army recruitment center.

“Thanks.” Steve cleared his throat. “But you were in the army too, before you became an actor.”

Bucky did not let himself dare to hope that this meant Steve had been following his career. He’d lost an arm, for crying out loud. Not a lot of ways that could happen.

“Yeah,” he said. “For nine years. Nothing as fancy as Special Forces though.”

Steve smiled, but he was still looking at Bucky strangely.

“Pretty unusual transition, from the military to Hollywood,” he remarked.

“Now there’s an understatement,” Bucky snorted. “But I’d actually been in a couple of army commercials. They usually hire professional actors for those, but people had been raising a stink, so they found some soldiers who had the right look and didn’t turn into awkward robots when dropped in front of a camera. Apparently I fit the bill, so I got my moment on the screen. I liked it, so when I was kicking around for something to do after I was discharged and had gotten used to my new arm and all that, I thought I’d give professional acting a try.”

“You make it sound like the easiest thing in the world,” Steve scoffed.

Bucky laughed.

“Well, it may seem that way now, but my first role did not make me too optimistic about the whole thing,” he said ruefully.

Steve laughed again, and Bucky couldn’t help smiling at the sound.

“I thought you made a great stripper,” he said. “The bunny ears were a nice touch.”

“Oh god, you saw that,” Bucky groaned. Man, that was embarrassing. At the time, he’d never even thought to worry about someone whose opinion he cared about seeing the performance, because he hadn’t _had_ anyone whose opinion he cared about.

“’Fraid so,” Steve told him, still looking amused.

“Well, at least my career only went uphill from there,” Bucky sighed, hoping he wasn’t blushing as much as it felt like he was.

“Pretty quickly too,” Steve remarked. “Most people don’t become major stars after all of five years in the business.”

Maybe Steve _had_ been following his career. The idea was remarkably gratifying.

“Only because I starred in a podunk little movie that did about a thousand times better than anyone expected it to, and it put me on the map for bigger projects.”

“And you like it?” Steve asked. “I mean, obviously you’ve got the talent, but do you enjoy the life?”

Bucky sighed ruefully, leaning back in his seat a little. Leave it to Steve to hit him with the important and impossible questions. Steve misunderstood his silence though. He got that detached, professional look that Bucky already hated.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, his eyes locked on the window beside Bucky. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

Bucky bit back another pained sigh. Their conversation had been going so well that he had almost been able to forget how weird things were between them.

“Hey, you’ve got nothing to apologize for,” he said. “I mean it, Steve. I’m not expecting you to be a…a robot here. I was serious about wanting to get to know you, and that’s allowed to go both ways. Your question didn’t bother me, I swear, I was just thinking about how to answer it.”

Steve finally met his gaze again, but he still looked guarded.

“I do like it, mostly,” Bucky told him. “I like that it lets me be someone else for a while.”

“What’s wrong with being Bucky Barnes?” Steve asked quietly, watching him with that damn unreadable expression of his.

Bucky swallowed hard. No one had called him that in so long. Steve had always called him Bucky, and he hadn’t been able to face the idea of anyone calling him that once Steve was gone. He left the name behind with his old life, became James to everyone he met after that. But he had never quite been able to stop thinking of himself as Bucky, and hearing the name again felt right in a way that nothing had in years.

“He’s a bit of a loser, really,” he told Steve, who was still waiting for an answer.

“I don’t believe that.” Steve’s voice was low but firm, and he was giving Bucky that intense stare again, forcing him to look away.

He was so fucking confused. Why was Steve being so nice to him if he hated him? And if Steve didn’t hate him, then what the hell was this charade for? He was too cowardly to ask, so he just cleared his throat.

“Anyway, the acting part I like, but the celebrity part is a little more complicated. I never really appreciated how it would take over my whole life. It still surprises me sometimes when I go out and people recognize me, want to take pictures with me. They all treat me like something special, but I’m…” he took a deep breath, staring at the floor. “It just drives me crazy sometimes, that they can’t see what a fuck-up I am. That’s why I pull some of the stupid stunts I do. I just want them to _understand_ that I’m not some hero like the ones I play.”

He could feel Steve’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up. He really hadn’t been planning on saying all that, but he was glad Steve knew now, what he was dealing with.

“I can play _Don’t Stop Believing_ on the piano with my feet.”

Bucky blinked, rewound that bit of dialogue in his head, and played it again. It didn’t make any more sense the second time around. He looked up, utterly baffled. Steve cracked up at the look on his face.

“Sorry,” he said once he’d stopped laughing. “I just figured the conversation could use a little lightening up. It is true though.”

Bucky hadn’t even known that Steve could play the piano with his hands, much less his feet. He must have taken it up later in life. It sent a pang through him to realize just how much about Steve he didn’t know anymore.

“Where’d you pick that up?” he asked, forcing himself to keep things light.

“My friend Sam inherited this old piano from his aunt, and he dared his girlfriend to play a song without using her hands. I think he was just expecting her to do a few chords using her nose, you know _Hot Cross Buns_ , or something like that, but she just whipped her shoes off and played _Claire de Lune_ like a pro.” Steve shook his head and grinned. “The look on Sam’s face…if I hadn’t been so in awe of Nat myself, I probably would’ve cracked a rib from laughing so hard. Anyway, she saw how impressed I was and she offered to teach me. It took us a while, because of all the time we both spent out of the country, but one night we treated Sam to a duet piano rendition of Journey’s greatest hit. I think that night made him seriously question his choice of companionship.”

Bucky grinned, and then started to laugh in earnest as he pictured the scene.

“Man, that must’ve been a sight to see,” he said. “Tell me Sam got it on video.”

“Nah, he was too stunned by getting a surprise toe-piano concert to do anything besides stare at us with his mouth hanging open,” Steve said, smirking at the memory.

Bucky was on the verge of asking is there was a chance of him getting his own toe-piano concert, but he stopped himself. That wasn’t the kind of relationship he had with Steve now. He hadn’t earned that.

“Your friends sound pretty cool,” he said instead, and felt guilty for the spark of jealousy that shot through him at the fond look that overtook Steve’s face.

“Yeah, they are,” he said. “They’ve gotten me through a lot.”

“Like the plane crash?” Bucky asked gently, regretting the question when Steve shuddered and looked around the cabin with a grimace.

“Like the plane crash,” he agreed. Bucky could tell there was a story there, but he wasn’t about to press Steve for it.

“I can recite four different Broadway musicals in their entirety,” he said instead, hoping to distract the other man. “Including all the songs.”

It worked. Steve raised an eyebrow at him, a smile playing around his lips.

“Yeah? I didn’t know you still did theater.”

Bucky faltered at the word ‘still.’ Surely that was a reference to their past, right? Bucky had done a lot of theater as a kid, both plays and musicals, and Steve had always been right there with him, working backstage or at the lights. Did this mean that Bucky was allowed to talk about their history? He decided not to risk it.

“I don’t,” he said. “I just had a _lot_ of downtime once, and only so many channels at my disposal. Turns out that the Broadway channel shows a lot of repeats, but it was still the best option available.”

“You have a favorite show?”

“Oh man, don’t get me started. I’ll go all theater critic on you and bore your pants off.”

But Steve insisted that he was genuinely interested, so Bucky launched into his spiel, becoming more and more animated as he got absorbed in the subject. Steve really did seem to care about what he had to say, and the conversation progressed effortlessly.

Bucky was surprised by how easy it was to talk to Steve, while at the same time being the most stressful thing he’d done in a while. It was easy because it was Steve, and there was a reason the two of them had become friends in the first place. They just naturally clicked. And it was stressful because Bucky got the distinct impression that he was still supposed to be pretending that he had met Steve for the first time the day before, and the longer they talked, the more likely it became that Bucky would slip up and make a reference to their past. Besides that, he was worried about saying or doing something that would make Steve slip into his cold and distant professional routine. He managed not to get the dreaded ‘Mr. Barnes’ treatment again, but Steve didn’t call him Bucky again either.

But despite his worry, they managed to successfully navigate the conversation for the first few hours of the flight. Steve had gotten more relaxed and open, and Bucky was feeling more content than he had in a while. That was when the turbulence hit.

Steve was mid-sentence, at ease and smiling, when the plane jolted and bumped. Bucky thought nothing of it; he had been on what felt like hundreds of flights, and he barely noticed the turbulence. Steve though, turned a shade of grey that Bucky associated with deathly illness, and his eyes went wide with what could only be described as terror. He drew his legs up onto the seat and tucked his face against his knees, wrapping his arms around himself and hanging on so tight that his hands went bloodless.

Bucky stared at him for a moment, stunned, before he remembered about Steve’s entirely understandable fear of flying. He swore explosively and got up, placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder. He was _trembling_ , and Bucky felt like the scum of the earth for putting him through this. The last time he had seen Steve this scared…well, it wasn’t a pleasant memory.

“Hey,” he said, squeezing Steve’s shoulder. “Steve, it’s okay. It’s just a little turbulence. It’s fine, you’re fine. Plane’s still in the air. Steve, breathe.”

He yearned to run his fingers through Steve’s hair the way he always had when Steve was sick or scared or having an asthma attack, but he was pretty sure that would be crossing a boundary, and he didn’t want to upset him even further. He settled for taking Steve’s other shoulder with his free hand.

“Steve, look at me.” He let out a breath of relief when Steve raised his head and met Bucky’s gaze, though his eyes were a bit glazed. “It’s okay, Steve. I’m right here, man. Come on, deep breaths.”

Steve stared at him for a moment before pulling in a deep, albeit shaky, breath. His eyes cleared a little and he took another breath.

“That’s it,” Bucky encouraged, relieved. “Just keep breathing, pal. Everything’s fine.”

Steve obligingly kept taking steadier and steadier breaths, and he began to uncurl his body a little. Then he blinked, really focusing on Bucky, and the color flooded back into his cheeks with a vengeance, making him glow red as a sunset. He flinched back, and Bucky let go of him immediately.

“Sorry,” Steve said, looking away as he let his feet fall to the floor and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m fine. You shouldn’t have had to see that. I swear it won’t happen again. It won’t interfere with me doing my job.”

Bucky fought to stop himself from actually growling in frustration. So much for making progress.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said patiently. “God, Steve, I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s my fault you’re on this plane in the first place.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve muttered, but while he still didn’t look directly at Bucky, he wasn’t looking quite as far away.

“Was it this bad on the flight over?” Bucky asked.

Steve gave him what was probably supposed to be a wry grin, but came out as more of a pained grimace.

“Worse, actually,” he said. “I think I freaked out the little old lady sitting next to me. She was really sweet though. Apparently she has a grandson around my age. He works for Google and has two rescue dogs, but one of them just got diagnosed with arthritis.”

Bucky stared at him for a moment before sinking back into his own chair with a chuckle. If Steve was talking about some stranger’s arthritic mutts, he was going to be fine.

“And I bet you let her talk your ear off about them for the whole flight because you were too polite to say anything, and then you helped her with her luggage once you landed.”

Steve’s light flush told him that he was spot on, and he laughed again. Steve grinned reluctantly.

“Nat always tells me I’m more of a Boy Scout than the actual Boy Scouts are,” he said ruefully.

“And the world is a better place for it,” Bucky told him.

That got him an eyeroll, but at least some of the tension had eased. They lapsed into silence. Bucky didn’t want to upset Steve by continuing to talk about the plane issue, but a serious concern had just occurred to him.

“Uh, you realize this whole press tour is going to take us overseas, right?” he asked. “More flights are unavoidable.”

“I’m aware,” Steve said, setting his jaw. “I know what I signed up for.”

“I just hate seeing you go through this, especially on my account,” Bucky told him. “I’ll talk to Clint, see about maybe getting us a car for the trips within the US. We can-”

“It’s fine,” Steve interrupted, looking at Bucky sharply. “I’m just your bodyguard. You don’t need to make special arrangements for me.”

Bucky clenched his teeth and looked away. Just his bodyguard. Right.

“Besides,” Steve went on, his tone a little softer. “I don’t want to let my fear rule me. I need to get used to flying again, so I may as well do it now. It’s easier with-”

He broke off, and Bucky looked at him curiously. Dare he hope that that sentence was going to go something along the lines of ‘it’s easier with you here?’

Silence fell, and it was a little less comfortable than before, but Bucky was scared to break it. Steve didn’t seem to be mad at him, per se, but they were drifting dangerously close to withdrawn and professional again. Bucky thought he might actually start crying if Steve called him Mr. Barnes again.

Fortunately, they had been nearing the end of the flight when they hit the turbulence, so the silence didn’t have the chance to stretch on too long. Bucky was pretty sure that Steve left permanent dents in the armrests of his seat from gripping them so hard as they were landing, but he didn’t have another panic attack.

Bucky stood and stretched as the small plane finally taxied to a halt.

“Ah, jetlag, glorious jetlag,” he said. “Can’t wait for that to set in.”

“Well, it had better wait for the next few hours,” Steve told him, looking decidedly relieved to be back on solid ground. “You’ve got an interview on the Evening Show.”

“Why does Clint hate me?” Bucky groaned. He’d forgotten about the engagement.

“Oh, cheer up,” Steve urged. “We’ve got time to eat before your interview, and this city is home to some truly fine cuisine.”

“Point,” Bucky acknowledged, smiling a little. “I still want to go to the hotel first though. These are definitely my travel clothes, not my appearing-on-national-television clothes.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Steve told him. “Although for the record, you look fine in what you’re already wearing.”

“Ah, flattery,” Bucky said with a smirk. “It will get you far in this business.”

“Well, don’t expect too much of it,” Steve warned him, but Bucky knew his stern look wasn’t sincere. “That’s not what they pay me for.”

Bucky just gave him a cheeky grin, feeling lighter and more hopeful than he had in fifteen years.


	4. Chapter 4

As it turned out, they didn’t have time to go back to the hotel. This was due to the fact the New York traffic was still a thing that sucked, and Bucky still had the attention span of a two year old when it came to food.

The actor had once again climbed into the passenger seat of the car that Clint had arranged for them, but he hadn’t initiated another conversation. Steve wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or disappointed by that. Talking to Bucky on the plane had been nice, really nice, but it had been painful too. Bucky had been so friendly and open that it was too easy to forget that they weren’t actually friends anymore. The easy companionship had left Steve aching with loss for what the two of them once had.

And then Steve had freaked out over some stupid turbulence, and Bucky had seen just how damaged he still was. As if that weren’t bad enough, the actor had started talking about special arrangements to avoid air travel, and Steve could not let that stand. He absolutely refused to be driven off that easily. Whether or not Bucky’s offer had been genuine, he knew that it was completely unreasonable to ask for special accommodations like that. Clint seemed like a good guy, but he would never go for something that would disrupt the schedule of the entire press tour, just because the bodyguard didn’t like flying.

“Oh my god, stop!” Bucky shouted abruptly.

Steve managed not to slam on the brakes and cause an accident, but it was a near thing.

“What?” he demanded, looking around wildly as he pulled over into a miraculously open space on the curb. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky was already scrambling out of the car and setting off down the street. Steve stared blankly after him for one stunned moment. He’d been warned that Bucky was going to be difficult, but was he seriously _running away_? Steve threw himself out of the car, just barely remembering to lock it before charging after his client.

He caught up with Bucky halfway down the block, where the actor had stopped at a hot dog cart.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded, glancing around in case someone had noticed them. In typical New York fashion though, everyone was ignoring them.

“Hot dogs, Steve,” Bucky said, pointing. “Actual, New York hot dogs from a cart.”

His eyes were wide with an almost childlike excitement as he stared up at Steve. Steve stared right back, his adrenaline slowly fading as he realized this hadn’t been an attempt at a prison break. He raised an eyebrow.

“You want a hot dog?” he asked.

Bucky snorted, giving him a look of mock disgust.

“Please,” he scoffed. “I want at least three hot dogs.”

Steve’s eyebrow crept even higher up his face, but he couldn’t help the smile that twitched at his lips.

“You know, when I said this city had fine cuisine, I really wasn’t talking about ground up pig gristle,” he said.

“Fine. See if I get you any,” Bucky sniffed. He turned to the bemused vendor, who was squinting at Bucky like he thought he recognized him but didn’t think he could possibly be right. “I’ll take three hot dogs and the biggest soft pretzel you’ve got.”

Steve had to swallow hard past the lump in his throat when Bucky handed him the soft pretzel with a little container of melted cheese. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. Bucky couldn’t have known that this was what Steve always got when the two of them had come to carts like these as kids.

“Is that all right?” Bucky asked with a concerned frown, misreading Steve’s expression. “I can get-”

“It’s great,” Steve assured him quickly, taking a bite to prove it.

He fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, but Bucky gave him a look that could have stripped paint.

“If you even try to pay me back for that, I will chuck your wallet into the Hudson,” he growled. “Meals are on me as long as you’re on the job.”

Steve wanted to argue, but not as much as he wanted to avoid causing a scene in the middle of the street. So he just thanked Bucky and held one of his hot dogs for him as they looked for a suitable place to sit down and eat. The cart had been pretty close to the New York Public Library, so they sat at one of the little tables outside of the massive building.

“God, I forgot how good these taste,” Bucky moaned around his first bite of food. “You can get a hot dog anywhere, but there’s nothing quite like a New York hot dog fresh from the cart.”

“Yeah, I guess that particular blend of toxic chemicals can only be found in this fine city,” Steve said as he dunked a piece of his pretzel into the melted cheese.

Bucky glared at him without heat.

“It’s the simple things in life,” he scolded. “Appreciate them.”

Steve grinned and raised his hands in surrender. Bucky smirked back at him for a moment, before returning to his food. They finished eating in comfortable silence as the sky darkened and the lights of the city came to life.

Even after the last trace of food was gone, Bucky didn’t seem to feel like moving. He just slouched down in his seat and watched the bustle of 5th Avenue. Steve found himself wishing for his sketchbook, fingers itching to draw the scene: Bucky content and relaxed, his beautiful face illuminated by the soft hues of the city lights. It had been so long since he’d gotten to draw Bucky in person.

He was distracted from his thoughts by a group of three teenage girls, whispering and giggling amongst themselves as they stared at Bucky. They were approaching nervously, each girl trying to push her friends ahead of her, but they were making steady progress. Steve sat up straighter and squared his shoulders, preparing for his first official trial as a bodyguard.

He nudged Bucky’s foot with his own, nodding at the girls once he had the actor’s attention.

“Want me to take care of them?” he asked softly.

Bucky shook his head.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind talking to them.”

Steve nodded and sat back, but still watched closely as the girls finally worked up the nerve to get close enough to talk to Bucky. The actor greeted them with a kind smile and listened patiently while they stammered through shaky greetings and compliments. He asked for all of their names and signed the backs of their phone cases when one of the girls pulled out a sharpie.

It was nice to watch him interacting with them, almost like an affirmation that stardom had not fundamentally changed the kind-hearted person Bucky was. Steve was happy to oblige when the girls asked him to take their picture with the actor, even though it meant juggling three different smartphones while he tried not to smudge the marker drying on the backs.

“We should probably get moving,” Steve said once the girls had retreated, giggling madly again and casting looks over their shoulders.

Bucky agreed and they started walking to the car. A couple of people glanced at the actor with interest, but no one else approached them.

“They seemed nice,” Steve remarked as they walked. “Does that happen to you often?”

“A couple of times a week, when I actually leave my house,” Bucky replied. “And yeah, they seemed like good kids. A lot of my fans really are awesome. It’s kind of daunting, actually. Like I’ve got so many people to let down.”

There it was again, that alarming evidence of a deep-seated self-loathing in Bucky. Steve wasn’t sure exactly where it had come from, but it worried him. He wished that he had Sam’s experience in counseling. Then again, Bucky probably wouldn’t appreciate the bodyguard he’d known for a day probing into his feelings.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you just made those girls’ entire month, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” was all Steve said.

He only just managed to stop himself from bumping Bucky’s shoulder with his own. They weren’t friends. But damn, it was getting harder to remember that.

*****

They were met by a cheerful team of crewmembers when they got to the news studio for Bucky’s interview. Steve had never been in a television studio before, but Bucky didn’t seem to feel out of place. Steve followed, bemused, as the actor was led into a brightly lit room with a mirror wall and a row of what were unmistakably hair and makeup chairs.

Steve smirked as Bucky sank into one of these chairs with a put-upon look. Even in his theater days, Bucky had hated wearing stage makeup. He said it made him feel like a clown. A teasing remark almost escaped Steve, but then he remembered that they didn’t have that kind of relationship anymore. Friendly though Bucky may have been on the plane, this was different. Steve was still virtually a stranger to him, and he probably wouldn’t respond well to teasing in front of other people, especially since more than a few of them were attractive young women.

So he just hung back and watched curiously as Bucky was made up and dressed. Apparently Clint had sent some clothes ahead for him, anticipating that he wouldn’t find the time to change on his own. When Bucky was deemed presentable, he was led to a greenroom where he would wait until it was time for him to go onstage for his interview. The young woman who would be conducting the interview came in and introduced herself, and within about thirty seconds, she was flirting with Bucky. Steve couldn’t blame her. He also couldn’t quite suppress the surge of jealousy that went through him.

You’d think he’d be used to it by now, seeing Bucky with girls. Even as a teenager he’d been gorgeous and charming, and he’d always had a few pretty girls hanging around him when he and Steve were in school. He would bring them to dances and kiss them under the bleachers, although he never really seemed serious about any of them. And now he had a love interest in almost every movie he was in these days, and the tabloids seemed to want him to be dating every actress he was ever seen in public with. But Sam hadn’t been kidding when he said Steve had been carrying a torch for Bucky for years. Seeing him flirt with other people had hurt then, and it hurt now.

_Professionalism,_ he reminded himself sternly, excusing himself from the greenroom and trying to pretend that he wasn’t running away. He’d never had any kind of claim to Bucky’s romantic attention, and he sure as hell didn’t have one now.

He did his best to pull his mind away from that particular train of thought and wandered through the studio until it was time for them to go on air. It was a news show, so they had to wait through a bit of actual reporting before it was time for Bucky’s interview. But then Bucky and the interviewer were brought onto one of the stages and deposited into armchairs. There was a buzz of activity amongst the camera crew, and the director was gesturing at everyone to get ready, and then they were live and Bucky’s interviewer was talking cheerfully to the camera.

“Hi, I’m Miranda Paton, here with critically acclaimed actor James Barnes to talk about his upcoming movie, _The Winter Soldier_ , which hits theaters in the US this Friday.”

She paused, and the feed switched to the movie trailer. Steve had seen it before, but it still made his heart pound. It was an action movie, like a lot of the stuff Bucky was in, but it was evident even from the trailer that it had more depth to it than his usual work.

Steve hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Bucky if his character died at the end, but he really needed to. He’d watched everything that Bucky was in, and even though only two of his characters had died, it had left Steve a wreck both times. It was hard to remember that it wasn’t real when he really had seen Bucky so close to death, and it haunted him with possibilities of what could have happened.

When the trailer ended, the feed switched back to Bucky and Miranda. The young woman let out an exaggerated breath, turning to Bucky.

“Pretty intense stuff, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s definitely one of my more serious films,” Bucky replied. “But that’s what I like about it. It goes beyond just the typical explosions and shooting and all that, and really tries to explore the nuances of my character, the Winter Soldier, because he’s really not your typical action hero. I enjoyed playing him because he’s so three-dimensional, and I liked the challenge of trying to figure out what his motivations are, why he does what he does and what makes him the way he is, and really finding a way to bring that to the screen.”

“Well, I imagine it helps that you brought something to the role that no one else could have,” Miranda said.

Bucky gave her an awkward smile and a questioning look, clearly not understanding what she was getting at.

“You have to know how much of an enigma you are, James,” the interviewer said with a coy smile. “Dark, broody, mysterious. Shrouded in unknowns, just like your character in the film. No one seems to know anything about your life before you started your military career. Why is that?”

Bucky looked thoughtful and, well, brooding. Steve tensed as he waited for the answer. This wasn’t the first time Bucky had been asked a question about his childhood, but he always managed to brush them off.

“My past has always been a pretty tough topic for me,” Bucky said eventually.

Miranda leaned forward, her expression shifting from flirty to sympathetic as she realized that she was about to get a serious answer.

“My parents died when I was fifteen, and I wound up in the foster system,” Bucky said, his eyes a little unfocused and not quite meeting Miranda’s.

The interviewer did a good job of hiding her surprise. Steve probably did less of a good job, but he wasn’t on camera. He was also pretty sure that he wasn’t breathing.

“Now I know there are a lot of amazing foster families out there, but I wasn’t placed with one of them,” Bucky said, and he was smiling, but there was a bitter edge to it that left it devoid of all humor. “I was placed with a cold, abusive, manipulative bastard who enjoyed making life hell for the kids he took in.”

The hate in Bucky’s voice was masked but still unmistakable. Steve felt numb, staring blankly at the stage. Bucky remembered Pierce, and their foster home. If he remembered that, then surely he remembered…

“How did you get through a situation like that?” Miranda asked, sounding more genuine than she had before.

Bucky looked down at his hands.

“I don’t think I would have,” he admitted quietly. “If not for my best friend. He’d been living with my family after his parents died, and we were placed into the same foster home after my parents’ accident.”

He paused, and Steve stared at him, pulse pounding in his ears. Bucky remembered him.

_Bucky remembered him_.

“He was always so strong,” Bucky continued. “Even on the worst days, he never gave up, and he never let me give up either. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for him, and I don’t just mean in this studio. He was always there for me, and I’ll never be able to thank him enough for that.”

Steve did not remember consciously deciding to move, but suddenly he was hurrying through the studio with no set goal in mind. He just knew that he had to get away from the stage, away from the man he’d thought he was starting to figure out, away from the confused and painful tangle of emotions roiling in his chest.

*****

Bucky’s stomach plummeted as he watched Steve turn and all but run from the studio. He cursed his own stupidity, his selfishness. Steve had made it clear that he wanted them both to forget about their past, and Bucky had insisted on dragging it to the surface in the most public way possible.

He’d just wanted Steve to know how grateful he was, how much of a positive effect he’d had on Bucky, but clearly it had been a mistake. And it was a mistake that he couldn’t even go about trying to fix because he was trapped for the next ten minutes with the rest of the damned interview.

He immediately steered the conversation away from Steve and their history, ignoring all of the interviewer’s attempts to dig more out of him. Eventually, she grudgingly returned to the more mundane topics, and Bucky barely paid any attention, too worried about how badly he had fucked things up. What if Steve quit? What if Bucky had just pushed him back out of his life for good? He didn’t think he could stand that.

The second the cameras stopped rolling, he was on his feet and practically sprinting in the direction he’d seen Steve leaving in. He knew he was being incredibly rude, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about snubbing a couple of TV personalities and their crew, not when he wasn’t sure if Steve was even still in the building.

The surge of relief that swept through him when he pushed open the door to his greenroom and saw Steve sitting on one of the couches was staggering. The blond man was hunched over, elbows on his knees and gaze fixed on his hands.

“Steve,” Bucky breathed, stepping just inside the room and letting the door swing shut. “I’m so sorry. I thought-”

“You really remember me?”

That brought Bucky up short. Of all the reactions he’d been expecting, that was not one of them.

“Of course I rem– Steve, _what_?” he stammered, baffled. Did Steve really think…? “Of _course_ I do. You were my best friend for more than ten years, how could I forget you?”

Steve’s head snapped up to look at Bucky, and his expression was so lost and confused and hurt that it sent a vicious pang through Bucky’s heart.

“You acted like you didn’t know me,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“I only did that because I thought you wanted me to! You were the one calling me ‘Mr. Barnes’ and acting like you’d never seen-”

“Not these past two days,” Steve interrupted. “Back then. You didn’t know who I was; you were so upset that the nurse almost had to sedate you.”

“ _When_?” Bucky demanded, bewildered and distressed. He had no idea what Steve was talking about. There was only one time he remembered needing to be sedated, and Steve definitely hadn’t been there. That had been the whole problem.

“After…after the train,” Steve said, his gaze dropping back to his hands. “I went to visit you in the hospital and you woke up and freaked out because you didn’t know who I was. I know you’re a good actor, but I really didn’t think you were faking it. And then Pierce never let me visit again, but he told me…he told me you had permanent brain damage, that you didn’t remember anything. He told me that he was sending you to a long-term facility to recover, and that I wasn’t allowed to see you.”

Bucky’s hands were clenched into fists and his blood was boiling with rage by the time Steve had finished speaking.

_Fucking hell._ He’d thought he hated Pierce before, thought there was no way he could despise the man more. But this? This proved him so, so wrong.

“Steve,” he said softly, trying to keep the fury out of his voice as he walked slowly to the couch. He sank to his knees so that he was on Steve’s eyelevel. Bucky wanted to touch him so badly, but he wasn’t sure if he was allowed. “You’ve gotta believe me, pal. The fall did mess with my head. It was screwed up for a little while after the accident. But by ‘little while,’ I’m talking two, maybe three weeks before I remembered everything and could think straight. The one thing I _can’t_ remember is those few days right after I woke up. God, if I’d known you’d been there…”

He shook his head, swallowing hard. Steve was staring at him, his face difficult to read. He looked hopeful and scared and pained all at the same time.

“I didn’t want to believe Pierce,” he said. “I knew he was a lying, twisted SOB. But then you never called me or came for me, never tried to find me, and I knew that he was either telling the truth or you just hated me.”

“Hated you?” Bucky repeated, stunned. “Steve, why the hell would I have hated you?”

Steve scoffed bitterly, giving Bucky an incredulous look.

“I let you fall off a train, Bucky,” he said. “You almost _died_ because I was too weak to hold onto you.”

Bucky’s mouth fell open.

“You’ve been blaming yourself for…? _Christ_ , Steve, that wasn’t your fault! How could you think that? The whole train thing was my stupid idea.”

“How could I _not_ blame myself?” Steve demanded. “I _had_ you, Buck, but I just let you go. Someone stronger could have pulled you back in, but I couldn’t – I couldn’t…”

“No one could’ve saved me after I slipped, Steve,” Bucky insisted urgently. “I was the one too dumb to get a better grip on the moving train. I never blamed you for what happened, Steve, _never_.”

“Then where were you? If you didn’t forget me, and didn’t hate me, then why did you just leave me with Pierce?”

Bucky could tell that Steve was trying to mask his hurt, but it still showed. It felt like a kick to the…everything. Bucky felt like he’d betrayed his best friend in the worst possible way.

“Because Pierce lied to me too,” he said quietly, dropping gracelessly onto the couch beside Steve, feeling the weight of fifteen years’ worth of pain and exhaustion. “First time I woke up after the accident -- first time I remember, anyway -- he was there. He told me you’d fallen too. He told me…Steve, he told me you were dead. I thought you were dead.”

Bucky’s voice cracked on the last word. He felt Steve freeze, heard the breath woosh out of his lungs like he’d been punched.

“And you had no reason not to believe him,” he whispered after a beat of stunned silence. “Because you thought I never came looking for you, either.”

“It just about killed me, Steve,” Bucky admitted bleakly, running a hand through his hair. “I thought I really was gonna go out of my mind.”

“And you…this _whole_ time?” Steve asked, sounding horrified.

“Right up until Clint said your name yesterday.”

They sat in complete silence for a moment as they both absorbed that. Steve’s weird behavior made so much more sense now. He’d been treating Bucky like a stranger because he thought that he really _was_ a stranger to him. He’d spent this whole time thinking that Bucky either didn’t remember him, or didn’t care enough about him to try to help him.

Tears prickled at Bucky’s eyes as that magnitude of what Pierce had done to them sank in.

“God, Steve,” he choked, and that was as far as he got before they were in each other’s arms, clinging tightly.

Steve’s scent hadn’t changed from when he was a kid, and Bucky breathed it in, letting it fill him with the same feeling of peace and rightness that it always had. The tears that had been threatening, really since he’d first seen Steve the day before, finally began to fall. He might have been embarrassed, but he could feel Steve’s shoulders shaking as well, and knew that the other man’s eyes weren’t exactly dry either. He was sorry that Steve was crying, but he couldn’t help being grateful for what it meant. Steve didn’t hate him either. He had only stayed away all this time because he thought that it was best for Bucky.

Bucky wasn’t sure how long they sat there like that, just clinging to each other, but it didn’t feel like long enough to make up for the time they had lost.

“Fifteen years,” he muttered bitterly, pulling away at last and rubbing at his face with the back of his hand. “That bastard took fifteen years away from us.”

“I know.”

Steve’s voice was thick and his eyes were rimmed with red. He reached over to grab the box of tissues from the side table, holding them out to Bucky before taking one himself. He laughed, and if the sound was a little hysterical, Bucky wasn’t about to call him on it.

“No wonder you looked like you’d seen a ghost when I walked into your room with Barton yesterday.”

“I was a little startled,” Bucky agreed with a wet chuckle. “I couldn’t imagine having to work with someone who looked so much like you. But then it _was_ you, and I just…yeah. Startled.”

“God, I must have seemed like such a dick,” Steve said, shaking his head.

“I just figured you were treating me the way I deserved to be treated,” Bucky shrugged. “I didn’t hold it against you.”

Steve gave him a sharp look, but whatever he might have been about to say was lost when a knock sounded on the door. They both jumped. Bucky had forgotten that they were still in the studio.

“Mr. Barnes?” a timid but determined voice called.

“I’ll be right out!” Bucky shouted back. He turned to Steve again and sighed. “I do believe there is some music to be faced. I beat kind of a hasty retreat after the interview.”

“I’m sure you’ll charm them into forgiving you,” Steve told him, standing and pulling him from the couch. He laughed again, seeming more genuinely amused this time.

“What?” Bucky asked.

“Your eyeliner is a little smudged there, hotshot.”

Bucky scowled at him and went over to the vanity in the corner, looking into the mirror. He let out a very unmanly yelp.

“A little smudged?” he repeated incredulously. “I look like Gene Simmons.”

“I guess they didn’t think they needed to give you the waterproof stuff, what with you being the dark and mysterious macho man that you are.”

Bucky chucked a powder brush at his friend. Steve just ducked it, laughing.

“Just you wait,” Bucky warned him, rummaging through the drawers of the vanity in the hope of finding some makeup remover. “You’re gonna show up in all of my paparazzi pictures looking like a vampire, and you’ll wish I’d let you borrow my makeup.”

“Not planning on running me off then?”

Bucky heard the serious question under the levity of Steve’s tone, and he turned away from the mirror to face his friend.

“Steve, I’m not…I know I have a reputation for driving my bodyguards away, but it’s not because I’m an asshole,” he began. “Well, I don’t know, I might be an asshole, but-”

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve interrupted. “I talked to Phil Coulson.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring,” Bucky said, wincing. There were a hell of a lot of things that Phil could have told Steve that Bucky would really rather he not know. A hell of a lot of things he wasn’t proud of.

“He told me why you fight so hard against having professional protection,” Steve went on, his tone gentle.

Bucky looked away, but Steve put a hand on his shoulder, comfortingly warm even through the fabric of the sweater he was wearing. He waited until Bucky met his eyes again before going on.

“You’re worth it, Buck,” he said firmly, with so much earnestness that Bucky felt his eyes start to water again. “I don’t know what other kinds of burdens you’ve been carrying, but I do know that much.”

Bucky didn’t know how he could say that, after how spectacularly he’d failed Steve. He could see from the stubborn jut of Steve’s jaw that this was not going to be a short argument though, and he really did need to get back out into the studio.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because I’m not even going to try pulling that crap with you. Aside from not wanting to cost you your job, I know you’re way too stubborn for it to work.”

Steve grinned at him.

“Glad we understand each other.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a brief torture flashback. It's not too explicit, but if you think it might be triggering for you, just skip past the section in italics.

Steve was still trying to absorb how much his life had changed. The amazing thing though was that nothing really had changed, it was just that now he understood everything. It was like he had been looking at his life through welding goggles, and now that he’d taken them off, everything was bright and clear again. Well, almost everything.

Steve hadn’t been able to ask Bucky about Afghanistan. There hadn’t been time, and even if there had, he wasn’t sure that he would’ve had the courage. Because Afghanistan didn’t fit into the rest of this wild story, and Steve was happy with the way things were turning out. He had his best friend back, and all of the hard feelings he’d been afraid of were nonexistent. He didn’t want to push too hard and have it all crumble into something even worse than the way things were before all of the greenroom revelations.

Bucky looked as dazed and happy as Steve felt, even as he made nice with the crew, but that could just have been him being his usual charismatic self. Steve had been right about him being able to charm all of the TV personalities into forgetting his momentary lapse in decorum within about thirty seconds. He gave each of them individual attention, smiling at what they said and offering jokes that made them all laugh.

Throughout it all though, he kept shooting glances at Steve, as if reassuring himself that he was still there. Steve gave him a small smile each time, and Bucky’s eyes invariably lit up in return. It made Steve feel incredibly warm inside, to be able to bring that kind of happiness to his friend just by being there.

With the joy though came the guilt, the regret. All this time, he had been letting Bucky mourn him, when just one follow-up visit anywhere along the line could have straightened things out. He thought he understood now, where some of Bucky’s self-hatred had been coming from. He’d been holding himself responsible for Steve’s death since he was seventeen years old. That was definitely enough to mess with anyone’s self-worth, and Steve suspected that they would both have to work hard to get past it.

He’d lost so much time with his best friend, and he wasn’t sure how much of that they would be able to overcome. They were both different people now, and they’d been through so much without each other. Still, if their easy companionship on the plane had been any indication, they were certainly still compatible.

Steve shook his head, thinking about how ridiculous that situation had been. No wonder Bucky had given him so many strange, confused looks. It must have been disorienting enough to have his childhood best friend come back from the dead, but adding in the fact that said friend acted like they were complete strangers…Steve had to admit that he was impressed with how well Bucky had just rolled with the situation.

Steve’s phone beeped in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see a text from Sam. It just read: **???**

He must have watched the interview. Steve smirked and typed up a reply.

**Pretty much my reaction to this whole thing. Bucky remembers everything. Too complicated to explain over text, but we’re working things out. I’ll call you later.**

He sent that, and was unsurprised when his phone beeped again just a moment later.

**But ur ok?**

Steve wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve a friend like Sam, but he was grateful.

**I’m good. Really. Your ball-kicking services will not be required.**

**Glad to hear it. Talk to u later**

Steve was smiling as he put his phone away. He meant what he’d said to Sam; he was feeling good. There was still the shock and anger and regret, but underneath it all, powerful and consuming, was a deep, joyful _hope_.

*****

By the time they left the studio, it was almost ten.

“Where to, Mr. Barnes?” Steve asked once he’d escorted Bucky safely to their rental car.

Bucky rolled his eyes at the teasing formality.

“I don’t know, Agent Rogers. You have any ideas?”

“Uh…” Steve cast around for something that Bucky would like. They lived in separate worlds now, he knew that, and this was right about the time when celebrities and the in-crowd tended to go to wild parties. “I know a lot of the nightclubs in the area. You’d have no trouble getting into any of them.”

“I never really took you for the nightclub kind of guy,” Bucky said, eyebrow raised.

“No, but you may remember that you’re the client in this situation. We can go wherever you want.”

Bucky frowned.

“Look Steve, I know that you’re my bodyguard, but that doesn’t mean that you have to cater to my every whim,” he said, leaning toward Steve over the console separating their seats. “We’ve got a pretty unique situation going here. You’re my friend first, okay? You just happen to be a friend who keeps me safe from all of the crazy stalkers.”

As Steve met Bucky’s earnest gaze, he felt the first twinges of misgiving. One of the things that had been drilled into his head in SHIELD training was that it was best to keep some professional distance from your clients. You could be friendly with them, but you weren’t supposed to actually be their friend. It could distract you from doing your job properly. Steve was pretty sure there was no way Fury would’ve given him this detail if he’d known about the extent of their history.

Looking at him now, it was hard for Steve to forget that he’d been in love with Bucky since he first realized what love was. It was also hard to forget that Bucky was still as straight as he’d been when they were teenagers, not to mention a celebrity with a life of his own that was distinctly separate from Steve’s.

Steve sighed. As painful as their original arrangement had been, at least it had also been simple. Bodyguard and client, nothing more. But Bucky was starting to look uncertain and worried, so Steve gave him a small smile and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Of course I’m your friend, Buck,” he said, starting the car. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to take my job seriously.”

“Well, in that case, I’m declaring it your job to drive us to the hotel. I’m not in the mood for a party. What I am in the mood for is some honest-to-god New York pizza and the crappiest eighties flick we can find on pay-per-view.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said with a smile.

They drove for the first few minutes in comfortable silence. Traffic was still heavy, but Steve didn’t mind. He was having trouble minding anything at the moment.

“Have you been back here much, since we were kids?” Bucky asked eventually.

Steve glanced around at the familiar city lights with a nostalgic smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “You heard about Pierce’s assassination in 2000?”

“Of course. I hung up the newspaper articles in my bunk.”

Steve shot another quick glance at Bucky. His fists were clenched and his expression was dark. Steve couldn’t blame him. He felt the same way. His hatred for Pierce had increased tenfold with the discovery that the man had deliberately separated Steve and Bucky in the cruelest way possible.

“Well when that happened, I would’ve been shunted off to another foster home, but an old friend of my dad’s took me in instead. He lived here in the city, so I spent a few years here before I joined the army.”

“You had an old family friend willing to take you in, but he waited until you’d spent almost three years with that bastard?” Bucky demanded. “Why didn’t he take you sooner?”

“Family friend is being a little generous,” Steve explained, touched by Bucky’s indignation on his behalf. “I never even really knew him. He didn’t keep in touch with Mom after my dad died, so he didn’t know when she died too. He had no idea what kind of situation I’d been in. He only found out when he did because-”

Steve broke off, eyes darting to Bucky’s face again before returning to the road. He knew he wasn’t the only one feeling guilty about not being there for the other, and Bucky didn’t need to hear about how dire Steve’s situation had been in his absence.

“Well, it’s a long story,” he went on, ignoring Bucky’s suspicious look. “But he opened his home to me as soon as he knew about my situation.”

“And he was good to you?”

Steve gave his friend a sad smile.

“Yeah, Buck,” he assured him. “He wasn’t exactly the warmest person I’ve ever known, but he was a good man, and he and gave me a good home.”

“You talk about him in the past tense.”

“Yeah. He and his wife died a few years back.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So was I. I was shipped out at the time.”

Silence fell between them once more. Again, Bucky was the first to break it.

“I always hated coming back here.”

“Why?” Steve asked, surprised.

“It reminded me of everything I lost.” Bucky’s admission was quiet, rough, and he cleared his throat. When Steve looked at him, his face was turned toward the window. “First my parents, then you. I could never help but think about how it was here we were trying to get back to when you…when I thought you died.”

Steve winced. These wounds were going to take a long time to heal. He took a hand off the steering wheel to rest it gently on Bucky’s knee.

“And now?” he asked softly. “What does the city mean to you now, Buck?”

Bucky kept his face turned away, but Steve could hear the smile in his voice when he answered.

“Possibilities.”

*****

Bucky’s suite was spacious and comfortable, without being excessively extravagant. It had two bedrooms with their own bathrooms, a shared common area with a couple of plush couches, and a basic kitchen tucked in the corner. Steve did a quick sweep through the rooms, finding nothing suspicious.

He ordered their pizza while Bucky showered, the actor saying something about makeup remover only doing so much. Steve changed out of his suit into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and then figured it was as good a time as any to call Sam. His friend picked up on the second ring.

“Hey man,” he said, and Steve could tell that he was using his deliberately casual voice. “How’s it going?”

“Good, I think,” Steve replied. “No, good for sure. I’m still just trying to absorb it all, to be honest.”

“Wanna walk me through it?”

Steve sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He began explaining everything to his friend.

“Damn,” Sam said once he’d related the part about what Pierce had told Bucky. “So he thought you were dead this whole time?”

“Right up until I walked through his door,” Steve replied. “Really gave new meaning to the phrase ‘looked like he’d seen a ghost.’”

“Yeah, I guess so. Wow. I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for him.”

He paused, and Steve wondered if he was thinking about Riley. Steve had only met Sam’s old partner a few times, but he’d heard a lot of stories. He knew how much Sam still missed him.

“But what about Afghanistan?” Sam asked after a moment.

“I don’t know,” Steve sighed. “He hasn’t said anything about it, and frankly I don’t want to bring it up.”

Sam seemed to understand that for the topic dismissal that it was.

“So was it a joyful reunion?” he inquired. “Did you cry? You cried, didn’t you?”

“Uh.” Steve cleared his throat awkwardly. “We acted like we didn’t know each other.”

Steve heard what he was pretty sure was the sound of Sam hitting himself in the face. He winced, knowing he probably deserved his friend’s exasperation.

“I didn’t realize he knew who I was!” he said defensively. “And he had no idea what was going on, so he just played along because he thought that was what I wanted.”

Steve could practically hear Sam shaking his head.

“You’re fucking hopeless,” he said, but there was an undercurrent of fond amusement in his voice. “But you said you were figuring things out?”

“Yeah, once we both finally got on the same page, things started going a lot smoother. We haven’t really had much time to talk though. We only just got back to the hotel.”

“So how are you feeling about all this?” Sam asked, clearly in counselor mode.

“Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve gotten past disbelief yet,” Steve admitted. “But it’s happy disbelief. It’s…god, Sam, it’s better than I’d ever let myself hope for.”

“I guess this is the part where I tell you to be cautious,” Sam said carefully. “I’m happy for you man, I really am, but you’ve got to manage your expectations. You know he’s not the guy you knew as a kid.”

“I do know,” Steve sighed. “But he’s still my friend. We talked for the entire flight over here, and it just felt so easy and natural, and that was before we even got everything sorted out. We’re both different, but we still, I don’t know…we _fit_ the way we used to.”

“But I’m assuming he still doesn’t know you’ve had a thing for him for like twenty years.”

Steve flinched and glanced at Bucky’s closed door, as if there were any way the actor could have heard Sam’s comment.

“No, he doesn’t know!” he hissed. “I’m trying _not_ to freak him out here. Things are awkward enough with me being paid to spend time with him; I don’t need to add unrequited teenage love to the mix. Besides, I’m not naïve enough to think that I’m in love with who he is now. I haven’t known him long enough for that.”

Steve didn’t tell Sam about how feeling Bucky’s hands on his shoulders during his panic attack had been like an anchor in a storm, or how seeing him interact with his fans had filled him with an aching tenderness, or how holding Bucky in his arms had felt like coming home.

“I trust your judgment, Steve,” Sam soothed. “And I’m glad you’re getting this chance with him, no matter where it ends up heading.”

“Me too,” Steve said with a soft smile.

Sam chuckled abruptly.

“You tell him about your brother yet?” he asked.

“Urg, no,” Steve groaned. “I don’t know how to even go about doing that.”

Steve looked up when a knock sounded on the door. That had to be the pizza.

“I have to go, Sam,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, get back to your bodyguarding duties and all that,” Sam dismissed. “I’ll talk to you later. Good luck, man.”

“Thanks.”

By the time Steve had tipped the surly delivery kid and tried and failed to find some paper plates for them, Bucky had emerged from his room. Steve tried very hard not to notice the drops of water rolling down the graceful curve of his friend’s neck.

“You ordered two pizzas?” Bucky asked, eyebrow raised.

“Hey, I remember the way you eat. Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve put on a little muscle since we were kids. This kind of physique requires a lot of carbs.”

“I had noticed, actually,” Bucky said dryly, sinking onto the couch beside Steve. He flipped open the box closest to him and paused, expression shifting into one that Steve couldn’t interpret.

“Is that okay?” Steve asked, worried. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed-”

“It’s perfect, Steve,” Bucky interrupted, his voice sounding thicker than usual. “I’m just…you remembered.”

“Of course I remembered,” Steve said with deliberate levity. “Watching someone eat a pizza with pineapple, jalapenos, anchovies, and pickles isn’t something you forget in a hurry.”

“You have no appreciation for culinary genius,” Bucky said automatically, his gaze still fixed on the box in front of him.

“ _Pickles_ , Buck. On your _pizza_.”

Bucky looked at Steve then, and something about his expression made the breath catch in his chest.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s just, I never thought I’d get the chance to have this argument with you again,” Bucky said quietly, the pain in his eyes raw and unmistakable. Steve let out a heavy breath.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “God, Buck, I can’t imagine…I thought I had it bad; just thinking you’d forgotten about me.”

“It did suck,” Bucky agreed with a smile that was just a little too sad and haunted to be convincing.

“Come on,” Steve said after a weighted pause. He scooped the remote from the coffee table and tossed it into Bucky’s lap. “I believe I was promised a crappy eighties flick.”

Bucky’s smile brightened at that, and they spent the next few minutes eating their pizza and browsing through the titles available on the large TV.

“That one,” Steve said eventually, pointing.

“Excuse you,” Bucky said indignantly. “There is nothing crappy about _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off_.”

“Agreed, but it is from the eighties.”

But Bucky was already pushing the buttons to queue up the movie. They both knew why Steve had picked it. Bucky had gotten the movie on VHS for his tenth birthday, and he and Steve had watched it so many times together that the tape had pretty much just lived in the VCR. It had been their favorite movie, and Steve hadn’t been able to bring himself to watch it since the train disaster. He had a feeling that Bucky hadn’t either.

They settled back on the couch, sitting close enough together that their arms touched. As the opening credits rolled, a sense of peace settled over Steve. He loved Sam and Natasha and his other friends, but this was different. This was _Bucky_ , and there was a special space in Steve’s heart just for him. The space had been cold and empty for such a long time that Steve hadn’t realized just how much it hurt until the pain was no longer there. It was like being able to breathe again after an asthma attack.

“Remember how hard I tried to convince you to take our own day off?” Steve asked as they watched good old Ferris trying to wheedle his friend Cameron into going out with him.

Bucky’s laughter was a balm to wounds buried deep within Steve. He almost forgot about the question as he listened to it.

“Of course I remember. You were so sure we were gonna have this amazing day. I don’t know how you always got pegged as the responsible one out of the two of us.”

“No one thought a sweet little thing like me could ever get in any kind of trouble,” Steve said with an innocent smile.

“Anyone who thought you were a sweet little thing obviously never saw you kick a guy in the family jewels.”

Steve gave his friend a mischievous grin, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Clint has no idea he hired a delinquent to protect me, does he?” the actor asked.

“Hey, I resent that. I’m not the one who stole a police car and went on a joyride through Hollywood.”

“You heard about that, huh?” Bucky asked with a wince.

“Buck, I was in _Croatia_ at the time, and I still heard about it.”

“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I bet the person who decided to change the original Coke recipe thought the exact same thing.”

Steve was sitting too close to Bucky to avoid the elbow to the ribs.

“Oh shut up, punk. I’m trying to watch a movie.”

And watch a movie they did, though it was still liberally sprinkled with commentary from both men. But Steve was so exhausted from flying across the country twice in three days that he was working very hard to fight sleep by the time the movie was over. He wasn’t quite sure at what point his head drooped onto Bucky’s shoulder, but it felt nice and warm and comfortable and his friend didn’t seem to mind. The last thing he felt like doing when the TV screen finally went blank was moving. Bucky apparently had other ideas.

“Come on, Agent Rogers,” he said, his tone brusque but his hands gentle as he nudged Steve upright. “Your back will not thank you tomorrow if you fall asleep on this couch.”

“But it’s such a nice couch,” Steve argued sleepily, settling deeper into the cushions.

“This is true. You know what’s gonna be even nicer? Your bed.”

Bucky took Steve’s hands and hauled him to his feet.

“Wow, that used to be a lot easier,” he remarked. “Exactly how much muscle mass did you put on?”

Steve just chuckled, a little more awake now that he was standing.

“Enough to make it hard to borrow Sam’s t-shirts without looking like a male stripper.”

“Now that sounds like a sight worth seeing.”

Steve knew that his friend didn’t mean anything by the comment, but it still made him flush a little. Thankfully, they’d dimmed the lights enough for Bucky not to notice.

The two of them cleared away the pizza boxes and then headed for their respective bedrooms. Steve paused at the doorway to his, and looked back to see that Bucky had done the same. They just looked at each other for a moment.

Steve wondered if Bucky was thinking the same thing he was; that this was all too good to be true, and that the morning would bring with it the realization that it had all been a dream. He really didn’t want to let Bucky out of his sight. He knew there was no way he could ask to sleep on the floor of Bucky’s room though, so he just cleared his throat.

“Goodnight, Bucky.”

Bucky’s smile was warm and just a little bit wistful.

“’Night, Steve.”

Steve slipped into his bedroom and eased the door shut, leaving it cracked a little. He wasn’t sure how good the soundproofing was, and he wanted to be able to hear if anything was wrong. Not that he was expecting any attacks in the middle of the night, but almost ten years in Special Forces had left him with a healthy sense of caution.

He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when he heard his phone ringing. He hurriedly spat out his mouthful of toothpaste and went to scoop the phone from where it lay in the pocket of his abandoned pants. He checked the screen, and saw that it was Clint Barton calling. He answered hastily.

“Hello?”

“Well, I don’t hear any outrageously loud or horrendous music, so either James has managed to run you off faster than I anticipated, or he’s incredibly jetlagged.”

“Don’t worry, I’m still on the job,” Steve promised. “Bucky just wanted a quieter night. We ordered in.”

There was a long pause, and then Clint sighed.

“Look Rogers, I really don’t need to know what kind of a history you and James have, but I do need to know if it’s going to get in the way of you doing your job.”

Steve realized the mistake he’d made in calling Bucky by his childhood nickname. Again. He really needed to be more careful about that. It didn’t surprise him that Clint had picked up on it. The man seemed very sharp.

“Believe me, sir,” he said firmly. “His safety is my top priority.”

“I do believe you.” Clint paused again, and when he spoke next, his voice was soft. “You’re the foster brother, aren’t you?”

Of course Bucky’s agent had been watching the interview.

“Yeah,” Steve affirmed just as quietly. It wasn’t something he wanted to spread around, but Clint seemed like one of the people who had to know.

“He told me about you, once,” the agent said. “It was after one of his, shall we say _wilder_ nights, so I had a hard time understanding him, but from what I could make out, you were protecting him long before anyone else cared about the name James Barnes.”

Steve didn’t know what to say to that. Clint had it backwards. Bucky had always been the one protecting him. But it didn’t seem like a good idea to argue with the man who was essentially one of his bosses, so he just waited for Clint to go on.

“Just be careful, Rogers. I don’t know exactly what happened the first time around, but I do know that he can’t go through something like it again.”

“He won’t have to,” Steve promised. “Those circumstances won’t be replicated. Even if you fire me as his bodyguard, I’m staying in his life for as long as he wants me.”

Steve hadn’t really thought about it before he heard himself say that, but he knew it was true. He and Bucky had only been reunited for a day, but the idea of going back to a life without him was already abhorrent.

“No one’s getting fired, Rogers,” Clint sighed. “But like I said; be careful. James’ problems aren’t going to magically go away just because you’re back in his life.”

“I understand, sir.”

*****

_Bucky had long since lost track of how long he’d been there, chained up in the dusty hellhole of a cell. The air was putrid with the smell of sweat and fear and rotting flesh. That last smell was coming from Bucky’s left arm, and the nasty infection that had set in around the open wounds left by the shards of his shattered bones._

_His mind was a fevered haze of exhaustion and agony, and he was having trouble focusing on anything. He refused to close his eyes though. He had to stay conscious, alert. At least, he thought he had to. He wasn’t quite sure why anymore._

_Even in his semi-lucid state, he couldn’t mistake the sound of the door banging open. It was a sound that he had come to fear in the very core of his being, because it always meant the inevitable onslaught of more pain._

_Even he hadn’t been expecting the form of pain that came next though._

_A horrified shout tore its way from his throat as two of his captors stormed in, dragging another figure between them, one that Bucky recognized. Steve’s blond hair was matted with blood, and more of it crusted the side of his face. His beautiful blue eyes were dull, one swollen shut with a nasty bruise. He was wearing the Monet shirt that Bucky had gotten him for his fifteenth birthday, but it was filthy and torn, showing the lacerations and bruises that mottled his thin torso._

_Steve’s captors tossed him carelessly to the floor, where he landed in a heap with a whimper of pain. He looked hazily up at Bucky, split lips forming his name in a whisper. Bucky lunged towards him, desperate to reach his friend, but he was chained to the wall behind him, the cuffs digging into his already bloody wrists as he struggled._

_“You get a break for now, American,” one of the men told Bucky with a malicious smile. “We’ve found a better plaything for today.”_

_He aimed a sharp kick at Steve’s ribs, and the smaller man yelped with pain. Bucky let out a yell of fury and horror, bruising his wrists further as he tried to get free, to do something. His struggles sent bolts of white-hot agony through his mangled left arm, but he barely noticed. Steve wasn’t even looking at him anymore, was just curled up on the ground, terror and misery stark on his battered face. Then one of the terrorists grabbed him by the arms and forced a pair of cuffs onto his wrists, shackling him to the wall across from Bucky._

_“No!” Bucky shouted. “Don’t touch him! Don’t you lay a fucking hand on him!”_

_But the men just laughed. One of them held a blade under Bucky’s nose, and the soldier knew from personal experience just how sharp it was. He braced himself for it’s fiery bite, but it never came. Instead the terrorist turned and brought the knife down on Steve instead, cutting through his t-shirt and into the skin underneath._

_Steve flinched back, but he had nowhere to go, and the back of his head hit the wall behind him with a dull thud. His tormenter ripped the tattered remains of his shirt away, exposing his frail chest, heaving with panicked breaths. There was a bruise blooming over his heart, and the terrorist traced its outline lightly with the very tip of the knife, not quite drawing blood._

_Bucky was frozen in place, every muscle in his body rigid. He could taste fresh blood in his mouth and realized that he was biting through his lip, but he didn’t care. All he could focus on was Steve, the thin trickle of blood dripping down his chest and the terror in his eyes._

_“Bucky,” he whimpered, his eyes pleading and desperate._

_Before Bucky could say anything in reply, offer any sort of platitude that would inevitably be empty, his tormentor stopped threatening and dug the blade into Steve’s flesh, opening up a long gash between two of his ribs. Steve’s shouts mingled with Bucky’s, echoing around the small room, but neither of them had any effect. The other terrorist got out his own knife and started in._

_The men cut into Steve over and over, and his ragged cries filled the air as he writhed with agony. Soon blood was pouring down his paling chest, and Bucky felt like his heart was being immolated as he watched. He threw himself against his restraints again and again, even though he could feel the bones in his right wrist cracking and his destroyed left arm felt like it had been stuck into a supernova, but it was to no avail, and he was screaming as loud as Steve, wild and desperate and unable to stop._

_“Steve! Steve! No please, you’re killing him! Please! Steve!”_

“…here. I’m right here, Buck. It’s okay, you’re safe. I’ve got you. Bucky, wake up, please, it’s all right, you’re all right, I’m here.”

There was a pair of arms around Bucky, and he thrashed against their hold for a moment before recognizing the voice that was murmuring in his ear, understanding the words that trickled into his frantic brain. He stopped flailing, but shudders still wracked his body.

“Steve?” he whispered, the word coming out more like a sob.

“Yeah, Buck, it’s me. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

The arms around Bucky tightened, and a hand stroked his sweat-damp hair. He looked up, his eyes straining in the darkness to make out Steve’s face, pinched with concern. Bucky pulled in a shaky, gasping breath, and it filled his nostrils with Steve’s familiar scent. That, more than anything, was what grounded him, and he collapsed against Steve’s chest, trembling as he fought off the vestiges of the nightmare.

He was in his bed, in his hotel in New York, not in that miserable cell in Afghanistan. Steve was safe, no longer a fragile teenager but a healthy, strong man, who had never known the horror of Bucky’s torture in the desert. The Steve in his dream had just been a product of his fevered delirium, caused by his illness from his infected arm. The real Steve was here with him, alive and whole and solid, lying on the edge of the mattress and holding him in his comforting grasp.

Bucky’s breathing gradually started evening out as he relaxed into reality.

“You good?” Steve asked gently, pulling back a little.

Bucky grabbed his shirt reflexively, a shudder of panic rippling through him. He was awake, but the horror of his nightmare hadn’t faded enough for him to be able to tolerate letting Steve out of his sight.

“I – stay, please,” he begged.

“Of course, Buck,” Steve soothed, tightening his grip again. “As long as you need. I just didn’t want to overstay my welcome.”

Bucky sighed and let his head fall to Steve’s chest, ear pressed over his heart. He listened to the steady thumping of Steve’s heartbeat, and just then it sounded better than any melody in the world.

“No chance of that happening, Steve,” he murmured.

Steve said nothing, but his hand started to move in soothing circles on Bucky’s back.

“Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?” he asked.

Bucky really didn’t, didn’t want to burden Steve with this part of himself, this darkness that had been haunting him since that cold day on the train tracks. But he couldn’t bring himself to hold it in any longer either, and Steve was right there, the best comfort there was.

“Afghanistan,” he murmured at last. He felt Steve tense under him, but he didn’t lift his head.

“I know you went through hell over there, Buck,” Steve said quietly, his voice oddly strained.

“It’s actually not the torture that gives me nightmares,” Bucky sighed. He bunched his fingers in Steve’s shirt, grounding and reassuring himself. “I mean, I have those too, but they aren’t…toward the end there…I don’t know, I guess I was delirious. I started seeing things, like waking nightmares, and they’ve stuck with me ever since then, even after the memories of the pain have mostly faded.”

Steve didn’t ask what kind of things he’d seen, leaving the choice to share up to him. Now that Bucky was finally talking though, he found that he didn’t want to stop.

“I thought they had you,” he whispered. “I knew you were dead, but I was too far gone to remember. I just saw your face, and the terrorists had you too, and they started torturing you in front of me, and it felt so real, and I…”

Bucky trailed off with a shudder. He took a few deep breaths, letting Steve’s comforting scent calm him. Steve himself was perfectly still, as if frozen.

“I’m an _idiot_ ,” he growled after a moment, startling Bucky with his vehemence.

Bucky panicked briefly, wondering if this meant that Steve was regretting ever taking on his protection detail. Maybe now that he knew how screwed up Bucky was, he wouldn’t want to stay. But then Steve was speaking again, faster than before.

“Bucky, I _was_ there. You weren’t hallucinating.”

Bucky stiffened and pulled away so that he could stare at Steve. He couldn’t be saying what Bucky thought he was saying.

“They did get you?” he asked, horrified. God, if those nightmares were _true_ …but they _couldn’t_ be. Could they?

“No, that part was just your mind playing tricks on you,” Steve said, meeting Bucky’s gaze and gripping his shoulder tightly. “ _I_ got _them_. Remember when I told you I was Special Forces? My team got called in to rescue you and the rest of your unit. I was the one who found you and carried you out…You were _screaming_ , Buck, from the moment you saw me. You must have seen my face and processed it the only way your brain knew how, after what you’d been through.”

Steve’s expression was pained, and he removed his hands from Bucky’s shoulders to rub them roughly over his own face. Bucky felt cold in their absence. Well, he thought he did. He was too numb to be sure.

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Steve breathed. “I thought you were freaking out because of me. I mean I guess you were, but because you thought… _god_. But I carried you out of the compound, and then Morita, our medic, had to sedate you. You were hurt so badly, and you were thrashing around…”

Steve swallowed, and even in the darkness, Bucky could see that there were tears in his eyes.

“We got you and your unit back to base,” he went on, evidently wanting Bucky to understand everything. “You were in bad shape, but the doctors got you stabilized. My team left before you woke up.”

He fell silent, arms crossed loosely over his chest and watery gaze fixed on the ceiling. Bucky just stared at him, trying to process this new information. The nightmare scene in his memory began to shift, showing him flashes of this older, healthier Steve, dressed not in jeans and an old t-shirt, but in desert combat fatigues. He saw Steve, eyes blazing with tightly controlled rage as he gunned down the terrorists, Steve jamming the key that he’d retrieved from one of the bodies into Bucky’s cuffs with fingers fumbling in their haste, Steve murmuring anxious reassurances as he carried Bucky out of that awful place and back into the light of day.

“You were there,” Bucky said wonderingly.

“I was there,” Steve confirmed. “And I’m so sorry, Buck, because I should’ve stayed there. I wanted to stay. But you just looked so broken, and seeing me had upset you so much, and I just couldn’t – I couldn’t put you through anything else.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say. Steve had saved him, had charged into the depths of hell to pull him out, even when he thought that Bucky either hated him or didn’t remember him.

He knew that he had to say something though, because he couldn’t stand the guilt on Steve’s face. He tucked himself back against Steve’s side, sighing in contentment when his friend’s arms wrapped hesitantly around him again.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“I just left you there.”

“You saved my life, Steve. I may not remember it all that well, but I do know that I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. You were there for me, even when you thought…just, thank you.”

Steve sighed, but his arms tightened around Bucky.

“I’d say ‘anytime’, but I’d really like for us to avoid any other situations like that,” he said.

Bucky chuckled, but the sound faded quickly. He listened to the reassuring beat of Steve’s heart under his ear, thinking about how hard it must have been for his friend. To see Bucky like that, already so broken, and to think that he couldn’t stay because it would make things worse.

“So, you’re Captain America?” he inquired, wanting to distract himself from that line of thinking.

“What?” Steve asked, sounding bemused.

“When I came to, they told me that we’d been rescued by Captain America and the Howling Commandos,” Bucky explained. “Obviously they were code names, but no one knew what you guys were actually called.”

“Oh.” Steve cleared his throat self-consciously. “Yeah. They called me Captain America. I’m not really sure where the name came from, but it stuck. The Howling Commandos were my team.”

“You guys were legendary.”

“We were just good at doing the things that needed done.”

If some of the stories that Bucky had heard were even remotely true, that was an understatement. But unless Steve had undergone a radical personality change since Bucky had known him, he would also be too humble to admit it.

“Steve?” he sighed.

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry.”

Steve’s breath ruffled his hair as he sighed too.

“So am I,” he said. “But I think we need to remember who’s really to blame here, and it’s not you or me. We’re both here now. We can’t change what happened, and we can’t get back the time we lost, but we can focus on making the most of the time we do have. Sound good?”

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky replied, smiling into the fabric of his friend’s shirt. “It sounds real good.”

Bucky knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as Steve made it sound, but he also knew that it would be so much better than anything he’d let himself hope for since that blustery January day.

Of course, some of those things he’d been hoping for when he was seventeen were probably still as far out of reach now as they had been then. Maybe even more so. As teenagers, there had always been the chance that Steve would turn out to be romantically interested in guys. As an adult, he was probably pretty set in his sexuality, and he’d given no indication that he was playing for the same team as Bucky.

But Bucky had dealt with his unrequited love for Steve before, and he would happily put up with it again if it meant that he got to have Steve around. Just getting his best friend back was more than enough.

“Hey Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I know what this situation calls for.”

Bucky pulled away again to look at Steve. There was a bright, excited gleam in his eyes.

“What’s that?”

“Two words, Buck: blanket fort.”

Bucky’s grin was instant. He and Steve had been making blanket forts since their first ever sleepover, when they were the tender ages of six and five, respectively. To Bucky, they had always meant safety and friendship.

“I like the way you think, Rogers.”

The two of them climbed out of the too-soft bed. Bucky stripped the covers and changed into pajamas that weren’t soaked in nightmare sweat, while Steve went to the closet to get more blankets. They spent the next twenty minutes constructing a masterpiece of a fort, supported by the backs of the two couches and composed of every single blanket the well-stocked suite contained.

“Steve,” Bucky said as they contemplated their creation. “I do believe we’ve outdone ourselves.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

Steve let Bucky crawl in first.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky called, wriggling in the nest of pillows and couch cushions that made up the floor. “Definitely our best yet. Get in here.”

Steve shut off the lights and then obliged, and he let out a sigh of contentment as he settled beside Bucky and gazed up at the fluffy ceiling. There was technically enough room for them to lie side by side without touching, but Steve wrapped his arm around Bucky and pulled him close anyway, and Bucky wasn’t about to complain.

Neither of them said anything; there was no need. Bucky felt more at peace than he had in a very long time. For once, the darkness did not hold the promise of nightmares. Steve’s warm, solid presence beside him drove those away, like it always had, like no one else had ever been able to.

As Steve’s arms tightened around him, Bucky wondered if he was thinking the same thing. It was a comforting idea, that he was helping Steve as much as Steve was helping him, and it was what carried him into the best night’s sleep he’d had in more than fifteen years.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for more non-explicit mentions of past child abuse, and a brief mention of a past suicide attempt.

Steve drifted back to consciousness slowly, feeling peaceful and content without knowing why. Then he opened his eyes and saw the face just inches from his own, and he remembered the events of the night before.

Bucky looked so tranquil now, his features relaxed in sleep, but Steve couldn’t help remembering the horrible screams that had dragged him from his own restless sleep just a couple hours after he’d gone to bed. It had been five years since Steve had heard Bucky scream like that, but it was a sound that he’d never come close to forgetting.

Steve couldn’t believe how much of an idiot he’d been. If he had just stayed there in the base hospital with Bucky after he rescued him, they could have worked this whole mess out five years sooner. Instead he’d just left his friend there, broken and devastated, because he was too cowardly to face the possibility of Bucky’s hatred and rejection.

He remembered his own advice from the night before. Pierce was the one to blame, not either of them. Still, Steve knew that he was not likely to stop wondering about how things might have been different if he’d been as brave as people always seemed to think he was.

He tried to push it out of his mind.

He carefully extricated his phone from the pocket of his sweatpants and checked the time. Bucky had an interview scheduled for the morning, but he still had some time to sleep. That should have been a pretty good reason for Steve to move, to crawl out of the blanket fort and do something productive, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It had been _so long_ since he’d seen Bucky this peaceful, and he wanted to drink in the sight. Besides, he didn’t think it was fair for Bucky to have to wake up alone when Steve had gotten to wake up to his best friend.

So he waited, listening to the soft sounds of Bucky’s breathing as he watched daylight shift across the blanket ceiling. He didn’t think he would have minded staying like that forever. However, it was less than an hour before he heard the change in Bucky’s breathing that meant he was waking up. He turned toward his friend, watching as those pale blue eyes blinked open slowly.

He knew the second Bucky saw him, because the man’s face lit up with what looked like a mix of relief and wonder.

“Steve,” he said softly, almost reverently.

Steve wondered how long it would take for Bucky to stop being surprised to wake up and find that he hadn’t been a dream. He held perfectly still as his friend’s human hand came up to touch his cheek lightly.

“’Fraid so,” he said, fighting not to lean into Bucky’s touch.

Bucky just smiled at him for a moment, and then let his hand drop. He stretched, hands hitting the walls of their fort and making the fabric ripple around them.

“What time is it?” he groaned.

“Time to get a watch.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky complained, glowering. “That wasn’t funny when we were twelve and it’s not funny now.”

“You’ve just never appreciated my comic genius.”

“That’s because you’ve never been funny.”

“Lies. I once made your dad laugh so hard that coffee came out his nose.”

“Yeah, because you came into the kitchen wearing a pair of my mom’s heels, and you tripped and fell into the dog’s water dish.”

Steve’s cheeks warmed and he laughed at the memory. Danny Brier had dared him to wear a pair of women’s heels for an entire day. It had turned out that Steve had terrible balance. The water bowl incident was just one of many mishaps that occurred over the course of the day.

“I guess I never could refuse a dare, could I?”

“Not even a little. It’s a miracle I didn’t go prematurely grey or get an ulcer, trying to keep you out of trouble.”

“Well, I guess it’s my turn to return the favor.”

Steve couldn’t quite make sense of the look Bucky gave him then. But then the actor just smiled.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

*****

They still had a little time before they had to leave for the interview, so they decided to order room service for breakfast. Sitting down to eat with Bucky at the small kitchen counter felt wonderfully familiar and natural, like so many of the mornings that they had shared.

Steve’s phone lit up and buzzed on the counter, and he glanced at it to see that it was a text from Natasha. He opened the message, which held nothing but the URL to what looked like a tumblr post. Curious, he tapped the link, and promptly started choking on his cereal.

“You okay?” Bucky asked him, looking torn between amusement and actual concern.

Steve didn’t answer him, partly due to the fact that he was struggling to clear his windpipe, and partly due to the fact that he was mortified. Breathing turned out to be the lesser issue, because Bucky snatched the phone from Steve’s hand before he could stop him. The actor glanced at the screen for a moment, blinked, and then dissolved into laughter. Steve glowered at him through streaming eyes as he finally dislodged the last bit of Cheerio from his trachea.

“It’s not funny,” he wheezed.

“ _‘We all know James Barnes could start wildfires with his hotness,’_ ” Bucky read aloud, smirking. “ _‘But I am here to draw your attention to his Greek god of a bodyguard, another significant contributor to global warming and a danger to ovaries everywhere.’_ ”

“Oh god, tell me it doesn’t say that,” Steve groaned, letting his head drop into his hands. He hadn’t even been able to get past the first line of the post.

“Word for word,” Bucky said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “It must’ve been posted by one of those girls we talked to yesterday.”

“The girls _you_ talked to,” Steve protested, snatching his phone back. “I didn’t think they’d even really noticed me, much less taken a picture.”

But there he was on the screen, standing just behind Bucky outside of the library. The photo was surprisingly high quality for a cell phone.

“You’re kind of hard not to notice,” Bucky told him. He frowned a little. “You’re not really upset, are you? I mean, winding up in the background of my pictures was always kind of inevitable, what with it being your job to follow me around.”

“I know, and no I’m not… _upset_ , I just never expected…” He shook his head, letting out a distressed noise when he saw the note count. It was in the thousands. The low thousands, but still. “Why do they even _care_?”

His phone buzzed again with another message from Natasha.

**Look through the comments, you sexy thing**

Steve scowled and stuffed the phone in his pocket.

“Sam?” Bucky asked.

Steve knew he shouldn’t have been as pleased as he was that Bucky remembered his friend’s name.

“No, Natasha,” he sighed. “Sam would definitely do the same thing though. They’re made for each other.”

“They sound like cool people,” Bucky said. “I’d like to meet them sometime.”

Steve studied him. Bucky didn’t seem like he was just trying to be polite.

“Well, you might get your chance,” he said. “The conniving opportunists asked me if you could get them tickets to the _Winter Soldier_ premiere.”

“That can probably be arranged,” Bucky said with an easy grin.

He stood and grabbed his and Steve’s empty dishes, carrying them to the room service cart. Then he came up behind Steve and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Come on, o destroyer of ovaries,” he said. “We don’t want to be la-”

He broke off with a high-pitched squeal. It turned out he was still as ticklish as he’d been as a kid.

*****

They did finally make it out of the hotel, and the morning interview went smoothly. Bucky realized belatedly that he hadn’t really talked with Steve about what from their past was and was not okay to share on TV, so he kept the conversation strictly on the topic of the upcoming movie, to the disappointment of the interviewer. Bucky could tell that she wanted to paint him as some kind of tragic hero, but he wasn’t about to put his newly repaired relationship with Steve in jeopardy by over-sharing again.

The rest of Bucky’s afternoon was free of any movie obligations. For lack of anything better to do, they decided to set out on foot with the vague goal of finding someplace to eat. Steve wasn’t sure about the walking part, apparently not wanting Bucky to be exposed, but Bucky insisted.

“I’m not the Pope, Steve,” he’d said. “I don’t spend my life behind bulletproof glass.”

He suspected that Steve was still used to the military, where the people he’d been protecting had been much more likely to be the target of violent attacks, rather than the attentions of overenthusiastic fans. Bucky understood it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be treated like the president.

Bucky had to admit that it was still a little weird having Steve as his bodyguard. Even though he knew now that Steve had never stopped caring about him, the idea that he was being paid to spend time with him just felt…off. He didn’t want to feel like a job to Steve. Still, it was what had brought them back together in the first place, and it was giving Bucky the excuse to spend every waking moment with his friend -- not to mention the non-waking moments -- so he shouldn’t complain. He just couldn’t help but be afraid of Steve slipping back into that cold professional persona. He didn’t think he could stand that, after rekindling their connection like this.

But so far, it seemed like they were doing fine. It had been ten kinds of amazing to wake up to Steve this morning, and he was relieved to find that the night’s events hadn’t made things awkward. The most difficult thing had been suppressing the urge to kiss Steve’s incredibly inviting lips, so dangerously close to his own in the cozy warmth of the fort they’d built together. _That_ definitely would have made things awkward.

“Are you excited for the cast party tonight?” Steve asked as they walked, shaking Bucky from his thoughts.

“Uh, I’d actually forgotten about that,” Bucky confessed.

He felt a spike of nervousness. Normally he wouldn’t have minded the prospect of a cast party, but this would be the first time he was going with Steve. Who Bucky was at parties and who he was with Steve were very different, and he wasn’t sure what would happen when they combined.

“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to get ready,” Steve said, oblivious to Bucky’s misgivings. “What do you want to do until then?”

And there it was again: Steve deferring to Bucky’s wishes. He’d done that the night before, after they left the studio. He’d gotten weird when Bucky called him out on it though. Apparently he was still trying to figure out the new dynamics of their relationship too. Bucky wished Steve didn’t feel like he couldn’t have a say in what they did, but he suspected that telling him so wouldn’t achieve much.

So he tried to think of something that they would both enjoy, something he could present as his own idea so that Steve wouldn’t feel like he was breaking whatever bodyguard code he was trying to follow. Maybe the Metropolitan Museum of Art? They’d spent some fun afternoons there as kids.

Before Bucky could give the matter much thought, he was distracted by the long black limousine that pulled up to the curb beside them. He might have been more startled, if not for the distinctive vanity tag and light-up spinning rims that meant this car could only belong to one person.

He sighed. He’d known that Steve was going to have to be exposed to the crazier parts of his life at some point, but this was a bit much to start with.

“Don’t look now, but I’m pretty sure I’m about to be kidnapped,” he told his friend, who glanced at the car in alarm. Recognition flickered in his eyes, and he grimaced.

“Buck, there’s something I probably should’ve told you.”

That was all he managed to get out before the limousine’s door was flung open and the force of nature that was Tony Stark burst forth.

“Barnes!” he cried jovially, slinging an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “I know you weren’t planning on visiting New York without coming to see me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bucky sighed, rolling his eyes. He really had been planning on visiting Tony, just not quite so soon and…unexpectedly. He didn’t bother asking how his friend had found him. The man had an uncanny way of getting any information he wanted.

Tony’s gaze shifted to Steve, and his eyebrows shot up.

“Wow, SHIELD’s standards must really be slipping,” he remarked. “This is who they trust with the safety of Hollywood’s greatest up-and-coming star?”

Bucky bristled, but Steve just rolled his eyes, giving the billionaire an exasperated but fond smile.

“Good to see you too, Tony,” he drawled.

It was Bucky’s turn to raise his eyebrows.

“You two know each other?” he asked.

“Oh, Captain Underpants and I go way back.”

Tony released Bucky and went to ruffle Steve’s hair. Steve swatted him away with practiced ease.

“Remember that friend of my father’s I mentioned, the one who took me in after Pierce was shot?” he asked Bucky, looking strangely nervous. “Well, that was Howard Stark.”

Bucky’s mouth fell open. Of all the revelations Steve had shared with him, this was…well, maybe not the _most_ surprising, but it was certainly unexpected.

“And I got the little brother I never wanted,” Tony said. He tugged at Steve’s jacket. “Are you carrying a gun? Do you have a badge and stuff, or do you have to be an actual agent for that?”

Steve put one hand on the top of Tony’s head and the other under his chin, holding his jaw shut.

“Yeah, _I’m_ the little brother in this relationship,” he grumbled, ignoring Tony’s glare.

He looked at Bucky as though worried about his reaction. Bucky honestly didn’t know what his reaction was, other than surprise. He was glad that Steve had been taken in by a family with the means to take care of him properly, but…

“Do I have this arm because of you?” he asked Steve, pushing up his left sleeve to reveal the gleaming metal underneath.

Tony let out a noise of indignant protest, but they both ignored him.

“He’d already been thinking about going into advanced prosthetics,” Steve said defensively. “I just suggested you as a potential candidate.”

Tony rolled his eyes, telling Bucky that Steve had done a whole lot more than just _suggest._

Christ. Just when Bucky thought he couldn’t owe anything more to Steve.

“I don’t suppose you’ve also cured me of a disease I didn’t know I had, or stopped my house from burning down without me realizing?” he said, half exasperated, half genuinely afraid of the answer.

“Did he not tell you about the kidney transplant?” Tony mumbled through his gritted teeth.

“He’s kidding,” Steve said immediately.

“About that, maybe,” Tony grunted. “He does defend you on all the online forums though.”

“I do not go on his forums,” Steve protested, whacking Tony lightly on the back of the head.

“Your internet history says otherwise.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stay off my computer?”

“Hey, I didn’t touch your computer.”

“Having Jarvis hack it from two states away still counts.”

“That was never specified.”

“That was specified the day you introduced me to Jarvis.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“What a surprise.”

Watching them bicker, Bucky felt a bemused smile stretch across his lips. The affection between them was obvious, but they must have driven each other _crazy_.

“So what’s the deal with you two?” Tony asked abruptly, cutting off the argument and glancing at Bucky before turning back to Steve. “I really wasn’t getting an ‘I don’t remember Steve’ vibe or an ‘I hate Steve’s guts’ vibe from that interview last night, and I thought that was the only reason you were keeping your angsty, broody distance from him.”

“Turns out we’re not so good with communication,” Steve said with a grimace.

“Yeah, that and evil personified,” Bucky grunted. He glowered at Tony. “Seriously, you knew about Steve and me, and in all the time we spent together, you didn’t bother to ask me if I remembered my childhood?”

“I seem to remember every question that even came close to coming close to your childhood getting shot down faster than an enemy drone in protected airspace,” Tony said. Then he shrugged. “But yeah, I did kind of get the feeling that you remembered. But believing that meant believing that you’d ditched Steve on purpose, and frankly I didn’t want to hate you, so I went with the amnesia option.”

There was a definite coolness to Tony’s words, and it stung. He was clearly wondering the same thing as Bucky. Why the hell hadn’t he been there for Steve?

“There was a third option, Tony,” Steve said, putting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder as if sensing his distress. “But can I explain it to you in the car before you cause your usual scene?”

Bucky glanced around them and saw that they were indeed already starting to attract looks. They all piled into the limousine.

“All right, story time,” Tony proclaimed as soon as the car was in motion.

Steve explained the situation, since apparently he knew Tony better than Bucky did. That was going to take some getting used to. Of course, it also meant that Steve had already been exposed to the craziest person in Bucky’s life and hadn’t run yet, so that was a good sign. Bucky didn’t have many real friends, but he’d come to consider Tony one of them. Which was why he waited nervously for his reaction after Steve had finished speaking.

“Huh. How very…Romeo and Juliet. And yes, that makes you Juliet, Steve.”

Steve turned an interesting shade of pink.

“I’d like to think we didn’t mishandle the situation _that_ badly,” he protested.

Bucky winced, because if he was Romeo, then yeah, he really had.

“I notice it’s not the romance part of the story that you denied,” Tony said with a frankly evil grin.

He was evidently not as adept as Steve was at dodging projectiles to the head, because the pen that Steve launched at him hit him squarely between the eyes. Before he had time to do more than sputter indignantly, they were pulling up to Stark Tower.

_“Welcome back Mr. Barnes, Captain Rogers,”_ Jarvis greeted as the three of them stepped into Tony’s private elevator. Bucky still had a little trouble getting used to the talking computers every time he came here. Steve, though, seemed unfazed.

“Don’t try to make nice with me,” he told the ceiling sternly. “You know what you did.”

_“My apologies, Captain,”_ the AI said, actually managing to sound a little sheepish. _“Your privacy request was overridden.”_

Steve scowled at Tony, who just gave him a bright grin. The elevator stopped on the floor with Tony’s personal labs, and Steve looked confused.

“You’re forgetting that this was originally a kidnap so that I could look at my masterpiece,” Tony reminded him as they trooped into his lab and Bucky sat in his usual chair. “You were just collateral.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“If it helps, I’m just collateral too,” Bucky confided. “He only likes me for the part of my body he designed.”

Steve snorted. He sat gingerly on the workbench beside Bucky’s chair.

“It’s probably not good that I let my client get kidnapped by a crazy person on my second day on the job,” he remarked ruefully.

“I would take offense to that, but it’s probably true,” Tony said distractedly, already absorbed in his examination of the arm.

Bucky shrugged out of his jacket and shirt to give him better access. He felt Steve’s eyes on him, and it made him feel uncomfortably exposed. His torso was littered with scars from his time in the military and the terrorist compound, and the flesh where the metal arm met his skin was a mess. The arm hadn’t seemed to bother Steve before, but he’d only ever seen it from mid-bicep down. Of course, he had apparently seen Bucky when the arm was a rotting gangrenous mess, so this was at least an improvement.

Bucky had known from the moment he woke up in the hospital on base that he was down a limb. He hadn’t been all that surprised. The arm had been a lost cause from the moment that Humvee rolled. He _had_ been surprised when he was approached by a Stark Industries representative a week after being shipped back to the States. He knew he wasn’t the first person to have lost an arm in combat, but he was the first person Tony Stark wanted to build an experimental advanced prosthetic for. At the time, Bucky hadn’t been able to understand his luck. That part made a little more sense now.

“All right, sweetheart,” Tony crooned, bending over and stroking his fingers along the metal of Bucky’s forearm. “Let’s have a look at you. We’ll see what the nasty man’s managed to do to you while I wasn’t there to keep an eye on you.”

Bucky laughed at the look on Steve’s face.

“Isn’t he like this with all of his robots?” he asked, holding still so that Tony could remove one of the plates to check the wiring underneath.

“Well yeah, but it’s a little different when the robot is attached to someone.”

“It’s the price I must pay to be the world’s best in advanced prosthetics,” Tony sighed dramatically.

“What, actually working with human beings?” Steve asked.

Tony nodded, gently tugging away another plate.

“That’s usually Pepper’s department.”

“Yeah, with good reason,” Bucky snorted. “You wouldn’t have a company if you had to deal with people who needed to like you.”

“I’m not sure he would even have his life,” Steve agreed. “Someone probably would’ve put a hit out on him.”

Tony drew back from Bucky’s arm to glare at the two men suspiciously.

“Does this mean you’re going to gang up on me from now on?” he demanded, crossing his arms. “Because if it’s a numbers game, I’ve got you beat. I’ve got Bruce, Happy, and a lot of well-paid people in my PR department.”

“Not Pepper?” Bucky asked.

“He knows Pepper would just join our team,” Steve laughed. “Actually, I’m pretty sure Bruce would too.”

“Not a chance, Rogers. Bruce appreciates me for the gift that I am.”

“Why don’t we ask him?” Bucky suggested, nodding towards the door of the lab, which had just slid open to admit none other than Dr. Banner himself.

Bruce Banner had been a critical part of getting Bucky a new arm. He handled the biological aspects of the project, helping to develop the artificial neurons that made the limb feel like so much more than just a hunk of metal attached to Bucky’s shoulder. He was also infinitely more personable than Tony, and he had helped ease Bucky through the stressful process of getting used to his new arm. He was a reserved, quiet man, but he had a good sense of humor and practically limitless patience. He was another person on Bucky’s very short list of actual friends.

“Ah, Bruce!” Tony cried, waving the doctor over to where they were working. “Just in time to settle something with me and Steve.”

“You know full well that I know better than to take sides with you two,” Bruce told him, but he seemed distracted by the combination of people in the room. His gaze kept flicking back and forth between Bucky and Steve, making Bucky wonder how much of their story he knew.

“It’s good to see you, Bruce,” Steve greeted, shaking hands with him. “And good to know that you’re still sensible as ever.”

“Good to see you too, Steve. I didn’t know you were going to be in town.”

“I’m here in the city as Bucky’s bodyguard, and we’re both here in this building because Tony kidnapped us,” Steve explained.

“I see.” Bruce raised an eyebrow at Tony. “I thought you said James made an appointment?”

“And I thought you knew me better than to believe that.”

Bruce chuckled and shook his head.

“I guess hope springs eternal,” he sighed.

“Ah, don’t worry about it, doc,” Bucky told him. “If I really hadn’t wanted to come, I’m sure my bodyguard could’ve handled things.”

He winked at Steve, who grinned back. Bruce looked back and forth between them in confusion again.

“Romeo and Juliet,” Tony helpfully explained. “Steve’s Juliet.”

This time it was Bucky who flung a nearby pen at the engineer’s head. His aim was as accurate as Steve’s had been. Tony rubbed his forehead and glowered while Steve went through the story again with Bruce.

“Wow,” the doctor said quietly once Steve had finished. “I don’t know what to say. I’m glad you found each other again, but I can’t help feeling a little complicit in keeping the two of you apart.”

“We know who the blame lies with, doc,” Bucky said, shooting a glance at Steve. “And it’s not you, or any of us. We’re choosing to focus on that.”

Steve smiled at him, and Bruce nodded.

“Shame people can’t be assassinated twice,” Tony mused.

Bucky couldn’t help but agree. He was glad that Pierce was dead, but he wished he’d been able to have at least some hand in that particular vengeance. They still hadn’t caught the actual killer, but if they ever did, Bucky planned on sending him or her flowers.

The mood in the lab was definitely a little more somber as Tony resumed his examination of Bucky’s arm. Bruce got out his equipment too and began to run his own usual checks. Bucky kept a nervous eye on Steve, but his friend didn’t seem at all bothered by the proceedings.

“You wanna tell me why I had to hear about your crash from Wilson?” Tony asked abruptly after several minutes of silence.

Bucky blinked, wondering what he was talking about, but then Steve grimaced, and he remembered the plane crash that had left his friend terrified of flying. He realized that he knew almost nothing about it. He hadn’t wanted to ask about it while they were still in the air, especially when Steve had been keeping him at a distance.

“When was that?” he asked before Steve could answer Tony.

“Almost six months ago,” Steve sighed. “And I was a little too comatose to be making phone calls at the time, Tony.”

“That’s no excuse. I bet I could figure out how to make a call while in a coma.”

“If this is your warped, emotionally-stunted way of asking me how I’m doing, the answer is that I’m fine. I made a full recovery, which I know you know, because every single doctor who treated me complained about how you were harassing them.”

“I wouldn’t have had to harass them if you’d let me get you transferred to a hospital here.”

“And have you visit me more than twice? I like my sanity intact, thanks.”

“Are they always like this?” Bucky murmured to Bruce as the doctor led him to one of the bulkier machines in the corner of the lab to run a full scan of the arm. Bruce looked over at Steve and Tony, who were still standing by Bucky’s chair, flinging words at each other. He smiled.

“Pretty much, unless they’re mad at each other. Then it’s dead silent. That was how it was in the beginning too, before they got to know each other.”

“You were here then?” Bucky asked, surprised. He hadn’t realized that Bruce had been working with the Starks for that long.

“Yeah. I was actually the one who found Steve.”

“Really?” Bucky remembered Steve’s hesitation when describing how he’d come to live with the Starks, and wondered about the story there. “What happened?”

Bruce hesitated, glancing over at Steve.

“I’m really not sure I should say.”

Bucky’s stomach lurched. That sounded…bad.

“Please, Bruce,” he said. “I need to know what he went through when I wasn’t there for him. You know he won’t tell me the whole story if he thinks it’ll hurt me. He didn’t even tell me he’d been in a plane crash until I asked him why he was practically having a panic attack on the flight over here. We can’t move past what happened to us unless we both know everything.”

Bruce sighed and took his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looked over at Steve again, and seemed to make a decision.

“You spent time in the same foster home as him, right?” he asked. Bucky nodded. “So you know how bad Alexander Pierce was.”

Bucky went cold, suddenly sure he knew where this was going, and why Steve hadn’t wanted to tell him.

“What did that bastard do to him?” he ground out through clenched teeth.

Bruce bit his lip, his eyes darkening.

“I already had my PhD at the time, but with the kind of work I was doing, I knew it would be useful to have a medical degree too,” he said. “I was in the last part of my medical schooling, doing my clinical hours. Steve was brought into the ER where I was working, and I was assigned to his case.”

“Did Pierce…?” Bucky couldn’t force the rest of the question past the lump that had formed in his throat. He looked over at Steve again to reassure himself that his friend was still there, still whole and healthy, smiling at his brother.

“He’d had an asthma attack,” Bruce told him gently. “One severe enough to make his teacher bring him to the hospital.”

“Why didn’t he have his inhaler?” Bucky demanded. That had always been one of his self-appointed jobs, making sure that Steve’s medication was always on hand.

“I asked him the same thing. Apparently he didn’t have one. I’m guessing Pierce refused to pay for it.”

Bucky clenched his fists, trying to keep his breathing even. He had helped Steve through more asthma attacks than he could remember, and they’d been bad enough even with an inhaler. The idea of Steve going through that without his friend or his medicine, gasping frantically for breath as his own lungs suffocated him…Bruce placed a gentle hand on his right arm, drawing him from his dark thoughts.

“He was pretty much fine by the time he made it to the hospital,” the doctor went on. “But I did a standard exam on him anyway. That was when I found the bruises.”

Nausea roiled in Bucky’s stomach. Bruce’s grip tightened, and Bucky could see that he was struggling to contain his own anger.

“I may not’ve had much experience as a physician, but I knew what they meant. I was just about to run a full workup and call a social worker, when Howard Stark barged in. I’d been working for him since I got my PhD, and he was sponsoring my medical schooling. One of the experiments I’d been running for him had yielded some unexpected results, and he wanted to talk to me about them. He was about as patient as Tony, and as observant of the rules, so he didn’t think twice about coming to see me while I was with a patient. I was about to politely but firmly kick him out, when he saw the name on Steve’s chart. Everything came out pretty quickly after that. Steve was pretty reluctant to admit to the abuse, but he didn’t have to.”

Bruce paused, his gaze unfocused.

“Pierce was dead the next day.”

Bucky froze, processing the implications of that.

“And you think Stark…?”

“I don’t know. I never really wanted to know. Howard certainly had the resources to put out an untraceable hit, but…well, like I said, I didn’t want to know. Howard used his influence to get Steve placed with him and Maria, and that was the important thing. Steve was safe. The Starks went through the process of legally adopting him. Tony had already graduated from MIT and moved back to New York, and once he got over the oldest child jealousy syndrome, he really took to Steve, though he’ll never admit it. Steve finished high school here and then went to art school for a couple years before deciding that he wanted to join the army.”

Bruce fell silent, and he and Bucky both looked back at the other side of the lab. Steve and Tony were still ribbing each other. Steve laughed at something that Tony said, and Tony threw what looked like a laser pointer at him, which he dodged easily.

“They’ve been good for each other,” Bruce said quietly, some of the darkness in his expression lightening as he watched the two men. “It isn’t always perfect, and they’re such different people that there are always bound to be some real disagreements from time to time, but they make it work. Steve keeps Tony honest and grounded, Tony keeps Steve from being wound too tight.”

Bucky probably would have felt a little jealous, but he was too grateful that _someone_ had been there for Steve.

“I’m really glad he has you guys,” he told Bruce. The doctor gave him a rueful smile.

“I’m just sorry that he didn’t have you as well. A couple of conversations could’ve saved you both a lot of heartache, especially after Tony and I started working with you. Steve was just so adamant that we not say anything to you. He barely talked about you at all, in the beginning. I think it was all just too painful for him to think about.”

Well, Bucky could understand that. It was the same reason that no one knew anything about his life before the army.

“He did call to check on your progress whenever he could though.”

“Of course he did,” Bucky sighed.

Suddenly, he couldn’t stand being on the opposite side of the room from Steve. He crossed the lab and had to work hard to suppress the urge to throw his arms around his friend. Instead, he sank back into his usual chair so that Tony could finish tinkering with his arm. Steve gave Bucky the smile that had always made his heart turn over.

“How’s it looking?” Tony asked Bruce as the doctor walked back to the group.

“Everything looks good on my end. How are the mechanics holding up?”

“Like typical Stark tech, which is to say flawlessly.”

“Does that mean we can get out of this lab?” Steve asked. “I seem to remember this building having much more comfortable rooms.”

“You’re just biased against my labs.”

“Yeah, and I wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact that every other time I’m in one of them, something blows up in my face.”

“That was one time!”

“I was missing an eyebrow for a month!”

*****

It turned out to be a good thing that Bucky had no obligations that afternoon, because neither he nor Steve felt like leaving Stark Tower right away. Steve had his own set of rooms for when he visited, and when Bucky shyly asked if he could see them, he was powerless to say no. It had been several months since he’d been there, but there was no dust or staleness in the air when he pushed open his door and led Bucky into his suite.

“Tony only started building this place when he inherited the company in ’06,” he told his friend. “I was in the army by then, so I never really got that many chances to stay here. It’s where I would come when I was on leave though, and it’s home.”

“Why didn’t you come here after your accident? It sounds like Tony was more than willing to take you in.”

“Yeah, he was,” Steve sighed. “And I’m grateful for that. But Tony…he’s more sensitive than he lets on. After what happened to his parents, he’s been really scared of losing the other people who matter to him, and he hates seeing us get hurt. It wouldn’t have been good for him to have me closeby, to have to see the state I was in.”

Sam had told him that Tony came to see Steve in the hospital right after he’d been brought in, only to leave after about thirty seconds in the room. Steve had been unconscious at the time, but he knew that he’d looked like an entire baseball team had tried to beat him to death with their bats.

“Besides, Sam lives in DC, and he has a lot more experience dealing with wounded veterans,” he went on.

“So he was looking after you?”

Steve had to smile at the proprietary concern in Bucky’s voice. As the slightly older and definitely healthier boy, Bucky had always taken it upon himself to be the caretaker in their relationship, and he had never trusted anyone else to do as good a job.

“Yeah. He took good care of me, Buck,” Steve assured his friend. He pointed to the framed photo collage on one wall, which held several pictures of Sam. “He was para-rescue, but he would work with my unit a lot. He retired a year before I did, and now he does counseling for the VA. I stayed with him between getting out of the hospital and starting this job with you.”

Bucky nodded and moved closer to the pictures, studying them. He brushed his fingers lightly over one of him and Steve at their classmate’s eighth birthday party. The two boys had their arms around each other, bright blue and orange party hats strapped to their heads and goofy smiles on their faces. Steve had a smear of strawberry ice cream on his cheek, and Bucky had lime green icing in his dark hair. Their eyes were alight with childlike joy and innocence, untouched by the pain of loss or separation. Bucky smiled at the photo but didn’t comment, his gaze moving on to the others.

“Those the Howling Commandos?” he asked, nodding at one that showed a group of men in combat fatigues, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders.

“Yeah, that’s the gang,” Steve said, smiling at the thought of his team. He didn’t really miss the army, but he did miss them.

He turned back to Bucky, frowning when he registered the expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bruce told me,” Bucky said quietly, looking at the ground. “About how Tony’s dad found you.”

Oh. Steve had seen the two of them talking in the corner, and had wondered what kind of information Bucky was pulling from Bruce. He’d let it happen, because his friend deserved to know the truth, but he couldn’t help wishing that Bucky hadn’t asked. Still, he supposed that this conversation had been inevitable.

He walked to his couch and sat down, patting the cushion beside him. Bucky sank down next to him. He looked so sad and upset that Steve wanted to take his hand, but he decided against it, not wanting to make him uncomfortable. He waited until Bucky met his gaze.

“Ask,” he said simply.

Bucky bit his lip, looking down again.

“How bad did it get, after I left?”

“Well first of all, you didn’t leave,” Steve corrected. Bucky glared at him, and he sighed. “The beatings got worse.”

Pierce had always been more psychologically abusive than physically. He would do whatever he could to break the boys down without even laying a finger on them. He did hit them sometimes though, when he’d been drinking, which was rare, or when he’d had a particularly frustrating day at work, which was less rare. Bucky had always taken the brunt of the violence, which Steve hated but could never prevent. They had both learned quickly to read their foster father’s moods, and whenever he was clearly out for pain, Bucky would bait him, making himself the more appealing target. Nothing Steve said or did could get Bucky to stop, and he’d been forced to watch his friend take the hits for him. Alone though…

“You know how careful he was about his image,” Steve went on quietly. “He made sure to only leave marks in places that wouldn’t be seen. But then my class came to New York for a field trip, and I had that asthma attack. I’m sure Bruce told you the rest.”

Bucky nodded, but he looked distracted. He was staring at Steve with an intensity that would have been unsettling coming from anyone else.

“Steve, did he…?” Bucky’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, blinking. “Did he ever…do anything more than hit you?”

Of course he did, but Steve didn’t think Bucky was talking about the withheld meals or winter nights spent with the heating in his room turned off. And then he understood what Bucky was asking, and he really did take his friend’s hand.

“No,” he assured him firmly. “No, nothing like that, Buck.”

Bucky nodded and let out a shaky breath, holding tight to Steve’s hand.

“Okay. Okay. Good. I just…thinking you were dead, I never had any of these nightmare scenarios in my head, but now, knowing you were alone with him for six months…once I got the idea in my head…”

“I understand,” Steve assured him. And he really did, because ever since Tony’s offhand comment in the car, he’d had a nightmare scenario of his own bouncing around in his head. “Buck, can I ask you something now?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Steve hesitated, looking down at Bucky’s hand in his own.

“When Tony said we were like Romeo and Juliet, and I said I didn’t think we were quite that bad…you flinched,” he began. Bucky froze, and Steve’s gut twisted. So he hadn’t been imagining that. “Now I might be making something out of nothing here, but I need to know. When Pierce told you I was dead, did you…react like Romeo did?”

Bucky’s face gave him his answer.

“God, Buck,” Steve breathed, closing his eyes. His grip on Bucky’s hand had to be painful by now, but Bucky didn’t complain.

“I was too wrecked to put much of a plan together,” Bucky said softly. “But I’d seen on TV somewhere that if you blew enough air into your IV, it would stop your heart. All the pain meds and bandages made me so clumsy though…the nurse walked in on me trying to put the end of the tube in my mouth. They put me on suicide watch.”

Steve felt numb and cold. All this time thinking that he’d lost Bucky felt like nothing compared to how close he’d come to permanently losing him in the worst way.

He tugged Bucky into his arms and just held him, chin tucked over his friend’s head, listening to the slightly unsteady sound of his breathing. Bucky melted against his chest with a heavy sigh.

“By the time I was healthy enough to sneak out of the hospital,” he went on softly, “I’d decided that you probably would’ve hated me for killing myself, and even though I thought you were dead, I couldn’t stand that.”

“I could never hate you,” Steve whispered truthfully. “Would’ve broken my heart though. Would’ve broken me.”

He felt Bucky’s fingers clench in the fabric of his shirt. They just sat like that for a long moment, reminding themselves that they were both there, living and breathing and finally together again.

“Look at the pair of us,” Bucky said eventually, letting out a shaky laugh.

Steve just shook his head, Bucky’s silky hair tickling his chin. He couldn’t say anything yet, but he did squeeze his friend a little tighter, still not over the fact that he could. He had never taken his job as a bodyguard more seriously than he did at that moment. He knew he would do anything to protect Bucky, to keep him safe.

“You’ve got your ma’s record player,” Bucky remarked after the silence had stretched long enough for them both to pull themselves together.

He sat up a little straighter and Steve let him go, his arms feeling empty. He glanced over at the device in question.

“Yeah. When I moved in with the Starks, Howard asked me if there was anything in DC that I wanted. There wasn’t much from Pierce’s place, because those were really memories I could do without, and all of his stuff went to his biological daughter anyway, but I’d always missed that record player. I don’t know how Howard managed it, but he had it taken out of that storage locker your parents’ lawyer arranged for all of their stuff.”

Suddenly worried that Bucky would see that as an invasion, Steve tried to backtrack.

“That was the only thing I asked for though,” he said quickly. “All the rest of the stuff in there is undisturbed. I know most of it belongs to you.”

“I don’t mind that you went in there, Steve,” Bucky told him. “You were always part of the family. That stuff is yours too, and I’m happy you got to enjoy at least some of it. I know how much you always loved that thing.”

Steve cast the record player a fond look. Bucky was right about how much it meant to him. It had been one of his mother’s most treasured possessions, a wedding present from Steve’s father. When Steve was young, his mother would take him to a music shop and they would spend a few hours browsing and comparing selections. No matter how silly Steve’s choices were, Sarah had always let him pick a record to keep.

When his mother got sick, Steve started to go browsing alone, trying to find records he thought she’d like. It had become harder as cassette tapes took over, but he’d persisted, because it never failed to bring a smile to his mother’s face when he presented her with a new album and set the needle to the vinyl, letting the music wash through their modest apartment.

“I’d love to hear it again, if you don’t mind,” Bucky said, almost shyly.

Steve smiled at him and stood.

“Any requests?” he asked as he walked to the modified shelf that held all of his records.

“Surprise me.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at the challenge. He thought about it, and smirked. He selected a record and set it carefully into the player. The opening chords of the _Into the Woods_ overture began filtering through the air. Bucky started laughing, and the sound was better than anything Steve could have gotten from the record player.

“I knew you hadn’t forgotten my theater days,” the actor said. “Man, the first show we ever worked on together.”

“You made a very cute morally questionable prince,” Steve told him. “The braces really sold the whole image.”

“I was eleven!” Bucky protested with a dark look. “Just because _some_ people are born with perfectly straight teeth…”

Steve grinned as he returned to the couch and sat.

“I wasn’t born with any teeth at all,” he said, just to be difficult. “But I guess my genes felt like they owed me at least one good thing.”

“Buddy, your genes really got their shit together,” Bucky told him, and Steve felt himself growing warm as Bucky’s eyes swept up and down his body. “When exactly did you start looking like the poster child for 24 Hour Fitness?”

“Uh, just before I turned twenty,” Steve replied, hoping he wasn’t visibly blushing. He knew Bucky had asked the question innocently. “Tony accused Bruce of injecting me with growth hormones.”

“I can see why,” Bucky said. He paused, and they both just listened to the music for a moment. Then, “Bruce said you went to art school?”

“Yeah, for two years. I liked it a lot, but I’d always felt more called to the military, and once I finally met the army’s health requirements, I left to join up.”

“I’m glad you picked up your art again,” Bucky told him softly.

Steve gave him a sad smile, knowing what he meant. Pierce had burned all of his sketchbooks the week after they’d moved in with him, and he always destroyed any piece of art Steve produced after that. It hadn’t taken long for Steve to stop drawing entirely.

“Me too,” he said.

“Can I see?”

The excited hope in Bucky’s voice brightened Steve’s smile considerably. He got up again and went to his bookshelf, pulling out one of his filled sketchbooks. He placed it in Bucky’s lap. His friend started flipping through the pages, a soft smile on his face.

“These are amazing, Steve,” he said. He paused, chuckling, on a page with a sketch of Tony holding Bruce prisoner in a headlock.

“It’s more of a hobby now than anything,” Steve said with a shrug. “I do love it though.”

Bucky paused again, and Steve only had to glance at the page to know why. It was a sketch of Bucky, one of the only ones in that particular book. It was fairly innocuous, just him in costume for one of his earlier movies.

“Shit, this is so much better than the poster for that movie,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, that was kind of the idea,” Steve replied with a bashful grin. “I thought you deserved better than crappy photoshop.”

“Thanks for that,” Bucky said, chuckling. Then he looked up at Steve, and his expression turned sly. “So. Fan forums, huh?”

Steve felt himself flush, and judging by Bucky’s smirk, the color was pretty impressive.

“I only went online to find out the details of your next movie,” he said defensively. “But then I saw this comment about you being a bad actor, and I couldn’t just let that go, and things sort of…snowballed.”

Bucky’s smirk was a full-blown grin now.

“You realize that you were mostly arguing with thirteen year old girls, right?”

“Thirteen should be old enough to recognize talent,” Steve argued.

Bucky laughed.

“I’m flattered, Steve,” he said. “Really. Although frankly, if I’d known that you would be seeing all of my films, I don’t think I would’ve agreed to do _The Convent_.”

It was Steve’s turn to laugh.

“It wasn’t your best work,” he agreed. “You did look good in that priest’s outfit though.”

_“Sirs, Mr. Stark has asked me to inform you that he ordered lunch and is waiting for you in his personal dining room.”_

Steve automatically looked at the ceiling when he heard Jarvis’ voice, even though Tony always teased him about it.

“What’d he get for us?” he asked suspiciously.

_“Thai food, Captain.”_

Steve didn’t bother correcting the AI on his use of a title that didn’t apply to him anymore. If he was being honest with himself, he kind of liked it.

“Uh oh,” he groaned.

“What is it?” Bucky asked. “Do you not like Thai anymore?”

“No, I do,” Steve told him. “And Tony knows it. This means he wants something.”

*****

“Your stuff should be here in about half an hour,” Tony said without preamble as they all settled down with their plates of food.

Bucky blinked, looking confused, but Steve just sighed. He should have been expecting this.

“You might be taking this kidnapping thing a little too far, Tony,” he said. “There’s only so much crazy a person should have to be exposed to.”

“Nonsense! The Terminator loves me, and my place is ten times better than that dump you stayed in last night.”

“That dump is a perfectly comfortable four star hotel,” Steve argued.

“And this tower would break the star system. What’s the problem? You always stay here when you’re in New York.”

“Yeah, but that’s when it’s just me. Bucky is my client, and his agent set up that hotel for him.”

“Uh, if I get a vote, I’d definitely go with the billionaire’s genius tower,” Bucky cut in.

Steve looked at him, embarrassed to realize that he and Tony had been arguing about Bucky as if he weren’t even there.

“Are you sure, Buck?” he asked. “You don’t have to. Tony can be a big boy and have his people put our stuff back.”

“Of course I’m sure. I mean, the hotel was nice and all, but this is Stark Tower. Kinda no contest. So as long as there’s room for me, I’d love to stay here.”

“There’s plenty of room,” Steve told him before Tony could make some sarcastic remark. “You can stay in my spare bedroom if you want, so I don’t feel like I’m totally neglecting my bodyguard duties.”

That was completely unnecessary, of course. Tony had state of the art security; nothing would be getting to the actor while he was in the tower. But Steve wanted Bucky as close to him as possible. He was grateful when Tony didn’t call him out on it.

“That sounds great,” Bucky said, with a shy smile that quickly turned mischievous. “And I’m sure Tony has lots of great stories about you.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Tony said with that evil grin of his.


	7. Chapter 7

The rest of the day passed by in pleasant companionship. Steve really had missed Tony and Bruce, and it was nice to spend some time with them. But it was even nicer to have Bucky there with them, another piece of Steve’s family right where he belonged.

Before long though, it was time to start getting ready for the night’s cast party. It came as a surprise to absolutely no one when Tony shamelessly invited himself, but Steve didn’t mind. It would be nice to know more than one person in the crowd, even if he wouldn’t really be able to talk to his brother. They kept their public interactions to a minimum. By choice, Steve was one of the Stark family’s best-kept secrets. He’d never wanted the notoriety that came along with being related to a celebrity. Howard, and then later Tony, had respected that, and they’d done their level best to give him the kind of privacy he wanted.

Bruce, unsurprisingly, elected to remain in the Tower, where he had his own apartment. The doctor was as social as the next guy, but he preferred human interaction in a quieter, calmer setting. So did Steve, quite honestly, but the bodyguard didn’t have a choice this time.

Tony insisted on Bucky and Steve accompanying him in his limousine, but he promised to have one of his people drop off the rental car so that they could drive home when they wanted. Bucky seemed oddly nervous on the drive to the club, rubbing his palms over his black jeans and shooting quick glances at Steve before returning his gaze to the tinted windows. Steve didn’t want to ask him what was wrong in front of Tony, so he kept silent, but he didn’t like seeing his friend so uneasy.

The party was being hosted at one of the city’s more upscale clubs. Steve could hear the music thrumming from inside as he followed Bucky and Tony toward the building, Happy beside him as they kept an eye on their charges. There was a decent crowd waiting for them, and the actor and the billionaire stopped for photos on the red carpet that had been set up outside the club for the evening. Bucky was graceful in the face of all the attention, but Steve could tell that he didn’t thrive on it the way Tony did.

Tony vanished into the throng of partygoers as soon as they were inside, but Bucky hung back, staying close to Steve at the edge of the crowd. He seemed almost unsure of himself, which was surprising, given how many events like this he must have been to over the course of his career.

“Is everything okay?” Steve finally asked him, needing to raise his voice a little to be heard over the music.

Bucky seemed to shake himself. He cast another quick glance over the other occupants of the club before turning to Steve, looking like he was thinking hard about his next words.

“James!”

Steve fought back a frustrated sigh as he and Bucky both turned to see a man pushing toward them through the crowd. His face was vaguely familiar, and Steve figured that he must be another actor. He glanced at Bucky, who looked unduly alarmed by the situation. Before Steve could ask what was wrong, the man had reached them. He was undeniably handsome, with strong features and dark hair, but there was a cruel glint in his eyes that was immediately off-putting.

“James!” he repeated with a plastered-on smile, reaching out as though intending to pull Bucky into a hug.

When Bucky flinched back ever so slightly, Steve immediately stepped between them, telling himself that there was nothing possessive about it if Bucky didn’t want to be touched by this guy. The stranger scowled at him, but he didn’t seem to want to cause a scene, so he took a step back, shifting to the side so that he could look at Bucky. He spoke around Steve as if he weren’t even there.

“How’ve you been, man?” he asked.

“Fine,” Bucky said tersely.

“Good, good.” The man’s tone made it clear that he couldn’t have cared less. “Hey, I saw your interview last night. That’s messed up, about your foster situation. You never told me about that.”

“Was there something you wanted, Rumlow?” Bucky demanded, his face pale and set.

Rumlow raised an eyebrow and dropped the sympathetic smile.

“I heard you got called back for the Batman part,” he said.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but you heard right,” Bucky told him, a hint of satisfaction in his otherwise angry tone.

“In that case, I just wanted to caution you against getting your hopes up. They’ve got actual talent in the pool, and I’d hate to see you get your heart broken.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’d hate that,” Bucky spat. “But my heart is doing perfectly fine. I appreciate your concern though. It’s touching, really. Almost enough to make me believe that you actually have a heart of your own.”

“Cute,” Rumlow sneered. “A heart is a weakness in this industry, Barnes, as I’ve already shown you. I’m not afraid to be the strong one.”

He turned and stalked away, and Bucky glowered after him. Once the other man was out of sight, he let out a huge, exhausted breath, wrapping his arms around himself.

“Charming guy,” Steve remarked lightly, trying to get a handle on the situation. He didn’t know who Rumlow was, but clearly he and Bucky had an unpleasant history.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky muttered grimly, almost too quiet for Steve to hear over the music. “Charming, he can do. That’s part of the problem.”

“He’s an actor, right?” Steve prompted when Bucky said nothing else.

Bucky snorted, his stormy expression lightening by a fraction.

“Steve, I cannot tell you how much I love the fact that you don’t know who Brock Rumlow is,” he said. “Yeah, he’s an actor. Does the same kind of roles that I usually do, so we’ve competed for a few, like the one now in the new Batman reboot. He is the assholiest asshole in the history of Hollywood, but he’s remarkably good at hiding that fact when he wants to.”

Steve wondered how much trouble he would get in if he punched Rumlow in the face without provocation. Probably a lot, but he thought it would be worth it if it eased some of the raw hurt that was visible in Bucky’s eyes. He wanted to ask just what Rumlow had done to earn that look, but he didn’t want to push Bucky when he was in this state.

“He’s also my ex-boyfriend.”

Bucky was looking directly at his shoes as he said those words, and he’d spoken so quietly that Steve wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. When Bucky nervously raised his eyes to gauge Steve’s reaction, and he saw the anxious vulnerability there, he knew he hadn’t misheard. He may or may not have stopped breathing at that point.

Bucky liked men. It was what Steve had hardly let himself dare to hope for when they were teenagers, what he had thought impossible now that they were grown and not a single interview Bucky had given had even hinted at the possibility.

Bucky must have misread his reaction, because his face fell and the blush that rose in his cheeks was visible even in the dim light.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, turning away. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable-”

“Hey, you didn’t,” Steve protested, gripping him by the shoulders to stop him from running. “You just surprised me, that’s all, but Bucky I swear I don’t mind. Really. I mean, if Rumlow is any indication, your taste in guys could use a little work, but it doesn’t bother me that you like men in the first place. Kinda the opposite, actually.”

He really hadn’t meant to say that last part. He didn’t want to hint that he wanted a relationship with Bucky, however true it might be, not when his friend was still rattled from the encounter with Rumlow, not when everything was still so new and complicated.

Bucky just stared at him, lips slightly parted and gaze searching and…hopeful? That might have just been wishful thinking on Steve’s part. Not that he had any right to wish for that.

“Steve-”

“You know, I’m pretty sure the point of you being at this party is for you to actually party.”

Steve jumped in surprise as Tony appeared out of nowhere and wrapped an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. He had momentarily forgotten that they were at a party at all, surrounded by other people. Which was a pretty strong argument for why getting involved with Bucky would be a bad idea. Steve couldn’t do a good job of protecting him if he was too distracted by the man himself.

“Tony-” Bucky protested.

“Don’t even bother, Barnes. I refuse to let Steve suck the fun out of everything. It’s kind of my life’s mission. Now come on; you and I have an appointment with some alcohol.”

Steve could only watch in bemusement as Tony dragged Bucky away for some mandatory fun. He shook his head. He loved his brother, but the man’s timing was criminal.

*****

Bucky could not help stealing glances back at Steve as Tony hauled him toward the bar. His bodyguard was lingering at the periphery of the party, looking mildly uncomfortable. Of course, that could just have been a product of their conversation, not the party.

The encounter with Brock had left Bucky feeling off balance, but it was nothing compared to what the following conversation had done to him. He’d been so sure, when he’d looked up and seen Steve’s expression, that he had just alienated his best friend. He’d panicked, wanting so badly to take the confession back, to apologize, to do whatever it took to make Steve stop looking at him like that. But then…

_“It doesn’t bother me that you like men in the first place. Kinda the opposite, actually.”_

What was _that_ supposed to mean? That Steve was _glad_ that Bucky was queer? If that were the case, then surely it meant…Could he really be that lucky?

“You seem more broody and distracted than usual, Barnes,” Tony called over the noise of the party as they reached the bar and placed their orders.

“I’m fine,” Bucky said automatically.

Then he paused, eyeing Tony appraisingly. If he and Steve were family, then surely he knew about Steve’s preferences. Asking him was bound to be awkward, and there would be hell in teasing to pay for it later, but since it was unlikely that Bucky would work up the nerve to ask Steve directly within the next decade, it was the best option available to him.

“Hey, Stark?” Tony raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment and invitation, and Bucky had to take a gulp of his whiskey before he could force the rest of the words out. “Has Steve ever, uh…has he ever shown any interest in guys? You know, romantically, I mean?”

Tony burst out laughing, and Bucky really wasn’t sure how to take that. Sometimes the man’s propensity to see everything as a joke could be extremely inconvenient. Bucky swallowed another mouthful of his drink as he waited for Tony to speak.

“Bruce owes me twenty bucks,” he said, which wasn’t exactly what Bucky had been hoping to hear, but it wasn’t a definite ‘no’ either. “Barnes, Steve is as straight as the straw in that woman’s drink.”

He pointed, and Bucky followed his gaze to the fluorescent orange straw in question. It was one of those curly ones, with more bends than a waterslide.

Bucky wondered idly what the expression on his face must have looked like at that moment. He was probably grinning stupidly. It certainly felt like he was grinning stupidly.

Tony’s expression, however, had gotten more serious after his initial outburst of amusement.

“Be careful, Barnes,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean think before you act.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow, and Tony scowled at him.

“I know, I know, pot and kettle,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “But believe me, I’ve screwed up enough relationships to know the dangers, and I don’t want to see Steve get his heart broken again. I like you, James, but this is my little brother we’re talking about. Just keep in mind that I could kill you in a hundred different ways without it ever tracing back to me.”

The smile he gave Bucky was full of teeth. The actor remembered what Bruce told him about Pierce’s death, and Howard Stark’s possible hand in it. He had to suppress a shudder, even as he was filled with amusement at the bizarreness of the situation.

“Are you, Tony Stark, giving me the shovel talk?” he asked, grinning.

Tony shrugged, unrepentant.

“Someone’s got to, and Bruce is all about nonviolence. Natasha’s got a real gift for the shovel talk, but she’s in DC, so this one’s on me.”

“Right. Well trust me, Tony,” Bucky said, meeting his friend’s gaze. “I’m the last person who wants to see Steve get hurt. And I know…” he cleared his throat, glancing down at his glass. “I know that just because Steve is interested in guys, doesn’t mean he’s interested in _me_. But I’m still gonna try.”

“Good,” Tony said. “He’s worth the risk.”

He gave Bucky a wink and a smile before vanishing into the crowd, drink in hand. Bucky watched him go, still a little bemused, and then shook his head with a chuckle. Steve had a real knack for inspiring loyalty, and Bucky was grateful for it, even if it meant risking painful death at the hands of Tony Stark.

His eyes swept the club, searching for Steve. He caught sight of him in one of the better-lit corners, talking to Happy. Bucky smiled, still in mild disbelief over how much his life had changed within just a few days. He’d never thought that he would get a chance like this again, and he was determined not to blow it.

When the bartender offered him a refill, he asked for something nonalcoholic instead. He had made some epically imprudent decisions while drunk, and he didn’t want to do anything stupid while Steve was here. He probably had enough damage to make up for as it was, what with some his stunts making their way into the tabloids.

“Uh oh, I know that look.” Bucky grinned at the familiar voice as a pair of slender arms wrapped around him from behind and a chin rested on his shoulder. “Who’s the unlucky winner?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” he told Skye, turning his head to give her a kiss on the cheek.

The young woman had been an actress since childhood, and she’d been in the first professional movie that Bucky had ever worked on. The two of them had struck up an instant friendship that lasted long after the director called the final cut, and they’d been thrilled when they were both cast for _The Winter Soldier_. Their relationship had never been complicated by romance, for which Bucky was grateful. Of course, there were always rumors that the two of them were together, but neither of them had ever felt that way about the other.

“Right,” Skye snorted, squeezing Bucky’s shoulders before letting go and dropping onto the stool next to him. “I’ll have what he’s having,” she told the bartender. Then she actually looked at what Bucky was having. “Wait, is that _ginger ale_? No, fuck that, I’ll have a screwdriver.”

Bucky laughed, and Skye gave him an unimpressed look.

“Tell me there’s at least whiskey in that,” she said, nodding at his soda.

“I already met my whiskey quota for the evening,” Bucky told her, indicating his empty glass from before.

“Since when have you given yourself a quota?”

Bucky sighed. He trusted Skye, but everything with Steve was new and uncertain, and he wanted to be careful.

“Let’s just say I’m thinking about trying to turn a new leaf,” he said.

“Wow,” said Skye, turning her head to scan the room. “Maybe not so unlucky a winner after all. Must be someone pretty impressive who’s caught your eye this time.”

“He is.”

Skye’s expression shifted from intrigued to concerned, and Bucky knew why. He was bisexual, but he tended to gravitate towards women because it was easier, expected. But Skye knew about the handful of men that he’d been with, including the last one.

“Are you sure, James? After everything with Rumlow-”

“He couldn’t be less like Brock Rumlow,” Bucky interrupted forcefully. “He’s a good man. And he’s not even in the business.”

“Okay,” Skye said, studying him seriously. “Okay, I trust your judgment. In that case, I’m happy for you.”

“Well, there’s nothing really to be happy for yet. He’s still gotta be willing to take my sorry ass.”

“I think you have a great ass. He’d be a fool to say no to it.”

“Thanks,” Bucky snorted. “But he’d also have to put up with the rest of me.”

Skye seemed to realize that there was genuine concern beneath his light tone, because she leaned towards him, bumping their shoulders together, and gave him a warm smile.

“Hey. The rest of you is great too,” she insisted. “I mean it. Let him see the real you, and he won’t stand a chance.”

Bucky sincerely hoped that was true, because Steve had already seen more of the real him than anyone should have to. He toasted Skye with his glass and took a sip while she rolled her eyes.

“You are planning on actually partying at this party, aren’t you?” she asked. “Even if you don’t want to drink.”

Now that was something Bucky hadn’t done in a while. He’d been so worried about slipping into his old patterns that he’d forgotten it was possible to party without losing his grip on himself. It was a surprisingly appealing prospect. This movie had a good cast, and Bucky was friendly with most of them, even if he wasn’t as close to any of the rest of them as he was to Skye. The party had a pleasant atmosphere, not as overwhelming and oppressive as many that he’d been to.

“I could probably be persuaded to dance,” he told Skye with a smile.

“Challenge accepted.”

*****

Steve was fairly certain that his ears would need a week to recover from the volume of the music, but otherwise the party wasn’t as unpleasant as he’d feared. He spent most of the time talking to Happy, who had been with the Starks even longer than Steve had. The older man had a tendency to take himself a little too seriously, but he was a good guy, and had always treated Steve well.

Bucky seemed to be enjoying himself. He had started out at the bar with Tony, but he’d joined the dancing before too long. Steve tried very hard not to be jealous of the girl who had pulled him onto the dance floor, the girl who seemed to be extremely comfortable with him. Steve recognized her as Skye, Bucky’s co-star for _The_ _Winter Soldier_. He also recognized her as the girl most tabloids insisted was dating Bucky. The actor hadn’t mentioned anything about a girlfriend, but the easy, carefree way he danced with Skye, the way he laughed with abandon at something she said, suggested that the tabloids may have gotten this one right.

Steve tried to tell himself that he was happy for Bucky, he really did. God knew the man deserved something good in his life. Besides, it wasn’t like Steve had ever had a chance with him. And even if he had, what then? Bucky was a celebrity, and a closeted one at that. Even if, by some miracle, he reciprocated Steve’s feelings, a relationship would be doomed to failure. Steve had always shied away from the spotlight, but he didn’t want to be a secret that Bucky had to keep. Not to mention the whole bodyguard/client issue. How would that work?

Thoughts like these chased themselves in circles around Steve’s head. It was almost one in the morning, and the party was showing no signs of winding down, when Bucky materialized out of the crowd. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright, and he looked beautiful and vital. Steve had to force himself not to reach out and touch him.

“Hey,” he said, a little belatedly. “Having fun?”

“Yeah, actually,” Bucky told him. He shot a glance over his shoulder and then turned his smile on Steve. “I’m ready to go now though.”

“Okay,” Steve said, surprised but not unwilling.

The hand he put on Bucky’s shoulder to guide him through the crowd probably wasn’t strictly necessary, but Bucky didn’t call him on it. The actor was only wearing a thin shirt, and his skin was comfortingly warm under the sweat-damp fabric.

Bucky melted into his seat with a sigh when they climbed into the car.

“I’d forgotten that parties could actually be fun,” he said.

“I thought you went to parties all the time?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t mean I enjoyed them. It’s hard to enjoy anything when your only goal is to get as drunk as possible.”

Steve shot him a concerned glance. He was worried about how miserable Bucky seemed to have been all this time. He was also worried about how big a role he seemed to be playing in changing that. If he messed this up, if things went wrong, what would it do to Bucky? Steve had already caused him more than enough pain to last a lifetime.

He resolved to do a better job of controlling his desire. Bucky may have been interested in men, but he didn’t deserve to have his life complicated by Steve. Maybe it would be best if he really were dating Skye.

“Pretty star-studded turnout,” Steve remarked casually. “That was Skye you were dancing with, right?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said with a fond smile. “She’s a good friend. Man, I should have introduced you. You’d like her.”

“Well, she is you co-star. I’m sure we’ll see her again on the tour.”

“Oh yeah, we’ll probably have lots of joint interviews. Awesome. Just don’t be surprised if she hits on you when you meet her. She’s never been shy, and she’s kind of having a dry spell as far as relationships go.”

Well, so much for that theory. Steve couldn’t help feeling a twinge of relief, even as he told himself how much simpler things would have been if Bucky had been safely off-limits in a relationship.

Bucky laughed suddenly, and Steve gave him an inquiring look.

“Something just clicked for me,” he explained. “Last night I was confused about why you seemed to know so much about the city’s night life when you don’t like to party, but that was before I knew about you and Tony.”

Steve grinned ruefully.

“Yeah, he did his best to get me out in his world,” he said. “Really wasn’t my thing though, and we found out pretty quickly that alcohol and I do not mix well.”

“I feel like there’s an interesting story there.”

“Not one that you’re gonna be hearing, pal,” Steve warned. “And don’t try asking Tony either. We have an understanding.”

Said understanding included words with Pepper, so Steve was pretty sure that Tony would adhere to his end.

“That a challenge, Rogers?”

There was a playful, competitive spark in Bucky’s eyes, and a wicked grin on his face that was far too distracting. Steve bit his lip and glued his eyes to the road.

“It’s a fact,” he said severely.

He could feel Bucky’s eyes on him, but he resolutely refused to look back at his friend. He navigated carefully through the city traffic until they reached Stark Tower.

“You sure you’re okay with staying here?” he checked. “I know Tony can be a lot, but he won’t actually hold it against you if you’d rather-”

“You’re making it sound like staying in the nicest building in the city is a hardship,” Bucky interrupted. “Seriously, Steve, I don’t mind. Unless…unless you’d rather not have me in your apartment?”

The sudden uncertainty in his voice tugged at Steve’s heart, and he finally looked at Bucky again.

“My home will always be your home, Buck,” he promised with a warm smile. Whatever else happened, that would always be true. “I just don’t want you to feel any pressure.”

Bucky met his earnest gaze, and there was something indiscernible in his eyes.

“You are my home, Steve,” he said quietly.

He got out of the car before Steve’s brain started to work again, and was halfway to the elevator before Steve could even get his seatbelt unbuckled. Steve tumbled out of the car and sprinted to his friend’s side.

“Likewise,” he said when he was close enough.

It was true. Even though Steve had not spoken to Bucky, when he was lucid anyway, for fifteen years before a few days ago, he knew that much. Losing Bucky had been like losing a part of himself, and even though he’d learned to live with the deficit, he’d never felt whole. He hadn’t realized just how bad it had been until he’d gotten Bucky back.

To prove his point, he took Bucky’s hand as they stepped into the elevator. It didn’t have to be anything more than a gesture of support. Bucky didn’t look at Steve or say anything, but he squeezed his hand and smiled at the floor.

Their bags were waiting for them in the middle of Steve’s living room, courtesy of Tony’s minions. Steve grabbed his suitcase and started tugging it toward his bedroom.

“That one is yours,” he told Bucky over his shoulder, pointing at the doorway to his guest bedroom.

It felt good to be able to offer a home to his friend, after Bucky’s family had taken him in all those years ago.

“There should be soap in the shower,” he added after he’d set his bag down, sticking his head through the doorway of Bucky’s room. “But judging by the smell of your hair, it’s probably not up to your standards.”

Bucky arched an eyebrow.

“You trying to tell me something?” he asked.

Steve grinned. Even when they were kids, Bucky had been a little fussier about his appearance, and teasing him about it was one of their old, familiar patterns.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied. “I’m sure it’s perfectly normal for people to travel with enough hair products to start a salon.”

“You just wish you had hair as good as mine,” Bucky snorted. “There are entire blogs about my hair. People fantasize about running their fingers through it.”

Of course, that immediately had Steve doing just that. Bucky’s hair was a little shorter than he’d kept it when they were kids, the strands tousled invitingly. It was dark and soft, and Steve knew from the night before that running fingers through it was like touching spun silk.

“Steve?”

Steve winced and pulled his mind away from that train of thought.

“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed by the flush that Bucky had to be able to see climbing in his cheeks. “Anyway, I know you usually shower in the morning, but Clint says you have to take them at night when you have morning interviews the next day.”

“Clint’s making you keep track of my showering habits?” Bucky asked, making a face. “That seems like it goes above and beyond the call of duty for a bodyguard. He’d better be paying you well.”

“He’s paying me fine,” Steve mumbled, embarrassed again.

It didn’t feel like a job, looking after Bucky. His friend had looked after him for so long, and Steve was grateful to be able to return the favor. But it _was_ his job now, and it was the only thing giving him the excuse to spend so much time with Bucky. His friend was a famous actor with a busy life, and if Steve lost his job, he would hardly get to see him. Which was why he had to pull himself together and keep this professional.

“Anyway, the towels are in the bathroom,” he said, backing away. “Call me if you need anything.”

He retreated into his bedroom and shut the door before he could do or say anything stupid. He let out a frustrated sigh. This was ridiculous. He’d been with Bucky for two days, and he was already feeling like an awkward teenager around him again.

This was going to be harder than he’d thought.


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky woke abruptly to a wave of cold air as the covers were stripped from his body. Before he could do anything more than let out a grunt of protest, strong arms were scooping him out of bed and carrying him out of his room and down the hallway. Bucky blinked in bemusement as Steve set him down in a kitchen chair, a mug of tea already on the table in front of him.

“That was…efficient,” he remarked, not entirely convinced that he wasn’t still sleeping.

“You know me,” Steve said with a disgustingly cheerful smile. “Efficiency is my middle name.”

“Well that’s weird, because I could’ve sworn it was Grant.”

“I’m a complex individual,” Steve smirked. “And I remember how hard it can be to wake you up.”

Well, that much was true, even when he was running on more than three hours of sleep.

“I’m gonna kill Clint,” Bucky informed Steve as his friend turned to something on the stove. Seriously, who the fuck scheduled an early morning interview for someone who had just spent half the night at a cast party? Shameless and sadistic agents, apparently.

“Maybe you could just egg his car,” Steve suggested mildly. “Less violent. More cathartic. Less likely to land you in prison.”

“I forgot that you’re a morning person,” Bucky grumbled. “It’s disgusting.”

“Well, it’s a good thing one of us is.”

Steve set a plate of pancakes in front of Bucky, followed by a container of syrup. Bucky stared incredulously.

“You made me pancakes?” he demanded. “It’s like four in the morning, Steve; how long have you been up?”

“It’s much closer to five in the morning, actually, and I’ve been up for an hour. The pancakes are from a mix though, so don’t get too excited.”

Bucky just shook his head and picked up his fork. He was glad there didn’t seem to be any lingering awkwardness from the night before. He wasn’t sure entirely what had happened, but it felt like Steve hadn’t been able to look at him after they left the club, and then he’d bolted out of Bucky’s room like it was on fire. Now though, he seemed back to his casual self, for which Bucky was grateful.

“You are something else, Rogers,” he remarked through a mouthful of fluffy goodness.

“And you’re too easily impressed.”

That was bullshit, but Bucky didn’t bother arguing with him. Steve sat next to him with his own plate, and they ate in comfortable silence for a while. It was nice enough to almost make Bucky forget that he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep.

“They’re going to ask me about my past again,” he said eventually, a little nervous. “Now that they know I was in the foster system, they’re gonna be nosier than ever.”

“That might not be a bad thing,” Steve replied thoughtfully. “You can show people that kids in the system aren’t lost causes, that no matter how bad things get, they can still make something of themselves. You could bring hope to a lot of kids out there.”

And wasn’t that just like Steve, to turn something awful into something good for others. No wonder he had gotten nicknamed Captain America.

“But obviously you should only share what you’re comfortable with,” Steve went on. “Just because you’re a celebrity doesn’t mean the public has a right to the private details of your life.”

“Yeah, try telling them that,” Bucky snorted with an edge of bitterness. “But I’m with you, Steve. I want to make something good out of it. But it’s your story too, and I won’t share it if you don’t want me to.”

Steve sighed, looking contemplative.

“I appreciate that,” he said. “But there’s no reason to hide it. I mean, it might be best if you left my name out of it for now, but you can talk about me if you want.”

“You sure?”

Steve bit his lip, and the sight was so distracting that Bucky had to look away.

“Yeah. I mean, I doubt they’ll be that interested in me anyway, but if they ask, there’s no reason for you not to tell the truth.”

“You’d be surprised by the things some people are interested in,” Bucky warned. “They want to know every little detail about my life. It’s…flattering? I guess? It can feel a little creepy though. Still, the only reason I’ve never talked about it is that it was too painful. Now though, I don’t mind sharing it, especially if it brings hope to kids in the system.”

“Even if it means giving up your mysterious and brooding persona?” Steve asked with a smirk.

“Oh, shut up.”

Bucky stood and grabbed their empty plates, carrying them to the sink.

“You should probably leave Pierce’s name out of it too,” Steve added, more serious.

“Good call,” Bucky conceded with a grimace. “God, can you imagine the shitstorm?”

“It would be unpleasant,” Steve agreed. “Now hurry up and get dressed. We need to leave in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bucky gave Steve a lazy salute before going to follow his order.

*****

Bucky’s interviewer for the morning was Sophie McCauley, a bright TV personality in her early thirties. He’d worked with her a few times before, and he liked her. She was refreshingly less frivolous than a lot of the other interviewers he’d had throughout his career. She never asked him questions about what kind of underwear he favored or which of the actresses he’d worked with he found the most attractive. Of course, this also meant that she wasn’t going to let Bucky off the hook easily.

Sure enough, as soon as the cameras were rolling and the initial introductions had been made for the viewers, Sophie started in on him.

“Now, I’m sure you know you caused quite the buzz on Saturday when you revealed that you’d spent some time in the foster system,” she said. “But since then you haven’t made a statement or offered any more information.”

“And you’d like to change that?” Bucky guessed with a cheeky smile.

“People are understandably curious. You’ve given hundreds of interviews over the course of your career, and yet not in a single one did you ever give even a hint of your past, until two days ago, when you dropped a rather large bombshell and then clammed up almost immediately.”

“Well, it wasn’t just my story to tell,” Bucky said honestly. “But I’ve talked to the other person involved, and he’s agreed that the public should know the truth. So ask away.”

Sophie seemed a bit taken aback by his easy capitulation, but she recovered quickly.

“How old were you when you entered the foster system?” she asked.

“Fifteen. We had just moved to DC for my dad’s work, and my parents were in a fatal car accident. I didn’t have any other family.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sophie said. She seemed genuine, which was one of the things Bucky liked about her.

“Thank you.”

“So you were placed in the DC foster system, even though you’re from New York?”

“Yeah. That was definitely jarring, because we’d only been living in the capital for a few weeks. It was like everything that could change in my life, did.”

“And in your last interview, you mentioned a foster brother?”

Bucky had to take a deep breath before answering that one. He forced himself not to look toward the edge of the stage, where he knew Steve was standing.

“Yeah. He doesn’t really want his name out there, so for the purposes of discussion, let’s call him Grant. He and I had been friends since we were in kindergarten, and he’d been living with my family since his mom died when he was twelve. After my parents’ accident, we begged the social worker to find us a place together. And she did.”

“But your foster parents were abusive?” Sophie prompted gently.

“It was just a man. And he…there’s not really a way to describe the situation that would give you a real idea of what it was like. He hit us, yes, but it was more than that. He took pleasure in finding ways to break us mentally. He wanted to make us feel like we were worthless, worse than worthless. He would give us just enough to survive on, and expect us to be grateful for it.”

For the first time, Sophie seemed to hesitate. Then quietly she asked, “did he ever force himself on either of you?”

“No,” Bucky told her, and dear _god_ was he grateful that he could say that. He still remembered the almost painful wave of relief that had washed over him when Steve confirmed that yesterday. “I think maybe he knew that was the one line he couldn’t cross without making us snap. I really think I would’ve killed him if he’d laid an hand on…on Grant like that.”

He could hear the darkness in his tone, and he forced himself to let go of some of the tension that had built in his shoulders.

“Why didn’t you talk to your social worker, try to get help?” Sophie asked the question like she knew it wasn’t that simple, but also knew that other people would ask the same thing if she didn’t.

“What you’ve got to understand is that this man, let’s call him Scar, had fairly significant influence. Even if social workers were generally receptive to complaints, which they aren’t, he would’ve found a way to make all of our allegations go away.”

“So what did you do?”

“We toughed it out for almost two years. We probably would’ve managed to make it until I wasn’t a minor anymore, but then Scar told me that he was gonna kick me out. I don’t know why; I guess he got tired of me, or knew that it was the most painful thing he could do to me and Grant. Whatever the reason, I knew I couldn’t let it happen, because he would’ve been keeping my foster brother. There was no way I was leaving Grant with him. He wouldn’t have made it to his eighteenth birthday.”

Bucky fought back a shudder at the remembered horror and desperation of that time. Pierce’s eyes had been so cold, but the sick smirk on his face said clearly that he was enjoying Bucky’s panic when he told the teenager to be gone within the week. Bucky had just run back to the room that he shared with Steve, and pulled his friend into his arms. You would have been hard pressed to say which boy was shaking harder.

“Then what did you do about it?” Sophie’s eyes were wide with genuine shock and sympathy.

“We decided to run away. I was seventeen and Grant was sixteen, and we figured we could get by on our own. We wanted to go back to Brooklyn, since it was still home to us.” Bucky paused there. “We might’ve made it too, if I hadn’t been such an idiot.”

“What happened?”

Bucky just barely managed not to run his hand through his hair. He did let out a tired sigh though.

“What you’ve got to understand is that we had no money, none at all. My parents had left everything to me, but I couldn’t touch any of it until I was eighteen. Scar never let us handle money; he was probably afraid we’d run a lot sooner if he did. So we had nothing, and we were desperate. So I had the bright idea for us to jump on a speeding train headed for New York.”

God, it sounded so stupid now.

“Something tells me that didn’t end well.”

“I fell,” Bucky admitted softly, remembering the biting cold, the feeling of his fingers slipping through Steve’s. “Right off the train and into a rocky gulley. I got banged up pretty good, especially my head. I was unconscious for days, and to this day I don’t remember the week after I woke up.”

“And what about Grant? What happened to him?”

“One of the first things I remember after waking up is Scar coming to visit me. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was no longer his problem, and that I’d be going back into the foster system at large when I got out of the hospital. And then…” Bucky swallowed, the pain of that moment hitting him anew, as though the fifteen years that separated him from it were nothing. “He told me that Grant had fallen too, but had gotten hurt worse than me. He told me Grant had died. I believed him.”

Sophie looked stricken. She said nothing, but whether that was because she was speechless or simply being sensitive, Bucky couldn’t tell.

“I kind of lost my mind,” he went on quietly after a moment. “Grant was the most important person in the world to me, and he was all I had left. Losing him…It was like some vital part of me was gone, and I could barely function. I couldn’t see the point of functioning anymore.”

Bucky paused again, and this time he couldn’t help the glance he sent in Steve’s direction, needing the reassurance of seeing him there, alive and well. Steve looked about as emotional as Bucky felt, but he didn’t let his gaze linger more than a second.

“The doctors and nurses were pretty stubborn about getting me better though, so by the time I was strong enough to leave the hospital, I had my head on a little straighter. I knew I couldn’t face the foster system again, especially without Grant, so I ran away again. That time I didn’t try to go to New York though. I went straight to the army recruitment office. They took me, and I left my old life behind.”

Sophie still seemed to have no idea what to say. She had clearly not been expecting a story quite like this.

“You were wondering why I’ve never mentioned any of this before?” Bucky went on. “The fact is, it was just too damn painful to talk about. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about it, about how badly I’d failed Grant and how much I missed him. Talking about it, exposing it to the public to be picked over and analyzed…I just couldn’t do it.”

“So what changed?” Sophie finally asked. “What happened to make you break your silence?”

Bucky smiled at her, warm and real and happy.

“The most amazing thing,” he said. “Grant walked right back into my life.”

Sophie raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

“It turns out that Scar was even more sadistic and twisted than I thought. He must’ve wanted to break me down completely before he washed his hands of me. He lied to me. Grant had never fallen off the train; he was fine.”

“But Grant let you believe that he was dead?” Sophie asked with skeptical disapproval.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Bucky said immediately, because no way was he letting the public blame Steve for any of this. “See, here’s where it gets a little complicated. Grant had visited me in the hospital, during the time that my brain was still recovering, the time I still can’t remember. Apparently I didn’t recognize him, and freaked out. Then Scar lied to him too. He told Grant that my amnesia was permanent, that I didn’t remember anything before the accident. He told Grant that I was going to be placed in a long-term facility.”

“Wow. I…wow. So then what happened to Grant? Was he left alone with Scar after all?”

“Yeah.” Bucky had to clear his throat then. “And that’s something that’ll weigh on me for the rest of my life. But Scar died a few months later, and Grant was adopted by a good family, one that treated him well and gave him the life he deserved.”

“How did Scar die?”

“Heart problems.” That was technically true. A bullet passing through the heart definitely caused problems.

“And how did you and Grant reunite after all this time?”

“He just walked into the room I was in. I recognized him, but it still took us a little while to get things sorted out.”

Sophie sat back in her seat a little and just stared at Bucky for a moment.

“Wow,” she said again. “I really can’t imagine what that must have been like. How are you feeling now?”

“Like I’ve finally got all my missing pieces back,” Bucky said with a serious smile. It was probably on the wrong side of a little too sappy, but it was true.

*****

About twenty seconds after the interview ended and Bucky was excused from the stage, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and grimaced, before grudgingly tapping the accept button and holding the phone to his ear.

“So how do you want to officially come out?” Clint asked before Bucky could even open his mouth. “We could go with a formal statement, or another interview, or hell, maybe even a party. Stark would love that.”

“Clint,” Bucky sighed.

“No, it’s fine,” his agent said, sounding harassed. “I mean, you’ve been good at keeping a lid on it so far, but it was inevitable that people found out. At least this way you’ve got a touching story to go with it. A little heads up might have been nice though. I mean, I got that you two had a history, but I didn’t realize you’d been in love with the guy for half your life.”

“Clint, Steve and I aren’t dating,” Bucky protested feebly. Had he really been that obvious?

“Maybe not, but that was one hell of an interview. I’m literally sitting at my computer and watching social media blow up.”

“It’s been like two minutes!” Bucky exclaimed, starting to panic a little now. Not about the public speculation that he was gay -- Clint had been right about that being pretty much inevitable -- but about what it would do to Steve. Would it freak him out? Would it make him uncomfortable with being around Bucky? How the hell had this even happened? He’d set out to talk about his foster experience, not declare his feelings for his best friend.

“I’m not sure you understand how emotional of an interview you just gave. Your heart was on your damn sleeve. Even I got choked up.”

“Right.”

“Seriously, James, it’s time. Just get it out in the open with everything else. People are sympathetic. They’re calling you a tragic hero.”

Bucky bit his lip. It was tempting, the idea of not having to hide anymore. But it wasn’t worth it if it meant scaring away Steve.

“Listen, I wasn’t lying about me and Steve not dating,” he said. “But if…that, you know, changes, will he still have a job?”

There was a pause, and Clint sighed.

“That depends on whether or not he could still do as good a job of protecting you.”

“I would think it’d just give him more incentive.”

“Maybe so, but it would complicate things. But James, speaking as your friend and not your agent: don’t fuck this up. I can find you a new bodyguard, and I will personally help Rogers find a new job if need be, but you can’t find a new Steve. It’s been three days, and I can already tell from three thousand miles away how good he’s been for you. And if you work as just friends, fine, but if you both want something more, don’t let worry about public opinion or job security keep you from pursuing it. Okay?”

“Wow, Clint,” Bucky said, genuinely touched. “And you accused _me_ of being a sap.”

Clint sighed again, and Bucky could practically hear his eyes rolling.

“You never answered my question.”

Oh, right. Bucky thought about it. He knew Clint was right. It was time. Past time, really.

“You’ve got me booked for Jon Stewart the day after tomorrow, right?” he asked.

“Yeah…and that could definitely work.”

“Great. I’ll work on what I’m gonna say. Thanks for the advice, and the kick in the pants.”

He hung up before Clint could protest the abrupt end to the conversation. He looked around for a sign of Steve, but found none. Hoping that history was repeating itself, he went to the greenroom. Sure enough, Steve was waiting for him there, although this time he was standing in the middle of the room instead of sitting on the couch. He said nothing for a moment after Bucky had walked in and closed the door, just staring with an impenetrable expression. Then he cleared his throat.

“That was some interview, Buck.”

“Clint said something along those lines,” Bucky agreed nervously. He couldn’t get a read on his friend at all. “You didn’t…you thought it was okay?”

“Well, you get zero points for creativity on my pseudonym,” Steve told him, but the amused quirk of his mouth indicated that he wasn’t angry about it. “But yeah, it was…really something.”

Bucky was still not sure what to make of his tone and body language. He didn’t seem upset really, but he did seem almost agitated.

“I’m coming out the day after tomorrow,” he offered tentatively, figuring he might as well get everything out there. “On _The Daily Show_.”

That seemed to surprise Steve. He looked almost pained for a moment, conflict warring in his eyes. Bucky panicked, but before he could backtrack, Steve’s expression settled.

“I’m really proud of you for that, Buck,” he said, and there was no doubting his sincerity, but it was equally clear that he was holding something back. “And you know I’ll be here for you, no matter what.”

That was incredibly nice to hear, but it wasn’t quite what Bucky had been hoping for. He didn’t know what to say. Apparently he had made his feelings for Steve pretty clear in that interview, so the metaphorical ball was in Steve’s court. Bucky was afraid to push, terrified of the idea of outright rejection.

“Buck…” Steve sighed, seeming to realize what was going unsaid. He reached out as if to touch Bucky’s arm, but then dropped his hand again, his expression growing more conflicted than ever. “I…I don’t want to mess this up. You’re too important to me to…”

He trailed off, looking frustrated. Bucky held his breath as he tried to figure out how to take that. Could this mean…? Maybe Steve really was interested in him too, and it was just everything else he was worried about. Granted, everything else was a hell of a lot, but if the feelings were there, then Bucky could work with that.

“I get it, Steve.” At least, he hoped he did. “And it’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Just…just so long as you’re willing to work on it together, wherever that leads us.”

Steve’s grateful smile told him that he’d said the right thing.

“Sounds good to me,” he said. He seemed to be on the verge of adding something else, but then he just shook his head. “You should probably get back out there. You can’t have had much time to mingle.”

“Right.” Bucky took the hint and moved to the doorway, where he paused and looked back. “My eyeliner okay?”

Steve grinned, and then made a show of checking.

“Safely within emo teen levels,” he said with mock seriousness. “Not approaching the raccoon danger zone.”

Bucky did his best to scowl, failed miserably, and then just gave Steve a stupid grin.

“Thanks. And if I’m still out there in forty-five minutes, I’m gonna need an extraction.”

“Roger that.”

Bucky ducked out of the room and back into the action, knowing that Steve would follow in a moment to keep an eye on him. He mingled with the crew with practiced ease, answering their questions and accepting their compliments with grace. He was both amused and gratified when Steve really did wade in after forty-five minutes with a fabricated excuse and an apologetic smile. He charmed the crew like a pro, and had Bucky out the door and in the car within five minutes.

Clint had booked him for another interview that morning, but since the interviewer was an insipid drama-hound, Bucky didn’t feel too bad about dodging her questions whenever she brought the topic dangerously close to Steve. Until he and his friend had sorted through this weird holding pattern they’d fallen into, “Grant” was off-limits as a conversation topic. He did talk about his life as a foster child in general terms though, not forgetting about the kids who might be looking to him for hope.

The discussions of his past had him feeling stretched a little thin by the time they left the second studio and climbed into the car.

“Is it always this tiring for you?” Steve asked him as he started the car.

“It varies. Today hasn’t been so bad though. I’ve done twelve interviews on some of my worst days.”

“Yikes. Well, at least this was the last one for today. You’ve got a photo shoot this afternoon, but we’ve got a couple of hours until we need to be there. You wanna get something to eat?”

“Always,” Bucky said, the pancakes from that morning already feeling like a distant memory. “Hey, is that diner on Jefferson still there?”

Steve looked surprised, then thoughtful. He didn’t have to ask what Bucky meant. The diner was a small, family-owned place in their old neighborhood, and it had been one of the boys’ favorite haunts, close enough that their parents didn’t mind them going by themselves. They had spent countless lazy afternoons there, homework spread out on the table and milkshakes on hand to make the algebra a little more bearable. It was where Steve had dragged Bucky after his first breakup at the tender age of eleven, where Bucky had finally coaxed Steve to eat his first meal after his mother died. Like their blanket forts, it had always been a place of safety and friendship.

“I’m not sure,” Steve admitted. “I haven’t been back there since ‘98. Never felt right, you know?”

Bucky did know.

“Well, let’s go see,” he suggested.

Steve agreed, and twenty minutes later they were driving through the streets of their old Brooklyn neighborhood. Bucky hadn’t been back here since his family had moved away, but the pangs of nostalgia weren’t as powerful as they could have been. A lot had changed in the years since they’d been here.

Apparently not everything was different though, because when they rounded the corner on Jefferson Street, the cheerful old diner came into view.

“Nice to know some things don’t change,” Steve said, echoing Bucky’s thoughts.

“Yeah. God, the amount of time we spent in that place…”

“Well, care to spend a little more?”

“Hell yeah.”

Ten minutes later, nine of which were spent parallel parking (“Jesus Christ, Steve, it’s not even that big a car!” “Shut up.” “How did you even pass your driving test?” “I said can it, Barnes.”), they walked into the old diner. That was when the nostalgia really hit.

“It looks exactly the same,” he marveled.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed quietly, a small smile on his face.

Their old booth was open, and they both gravitated toward it automatically without having to say another word to each other. Bucky slid into his side, sighing as he relaxed into the familiar seat. He smiled at Steve, sitting across from him.

“I’m pretty sure you take up twice as much of that bench as you used to,” he said. “I still can’t get over it. Must’ve been one hell of a growth spurt.”

“You’re not wrong,” Steve said with a wry grimace. “The number of times I tripped over my own feet or knocked my head into something because I wasn’t used to how big I was…”

He shook his head. Bucky was sorry he had missed seeing all that, but he didn’t say as much. He was really working on moving on.

“Well, I don’t believe my eyes. If it isn’t Bucky Barnes and little Stevie Rogers.”

Bucky looked up, and could barely believe his eyes either.

“Marie?” Steve said, sounding as incredulous as Bucky felt.

Marie, a kind, portly waitress, had to have been pushing eighty the last time the boys had been there. She hardly looked a day older now, aside from a slight thinning of her curly grey hair and a few extra laughter lines around her eyes.

“I was beginning to think you boys forgot about me,” Marie said. “I was so worried about you when I heard about your folks, Bucky, and after that touching interview you gave this morning I can see I had every right to be. What a story! You poor things; I’m so glad everything worked out all right. I’ve watched all of your films, Bucky, and I thought they were lovely. And it’s good to see you with some proper meat on your bones, Stevie. Lord knows a stiff wind could’ve knocked you over before. Now you boys just sit tight and I’ll put in the order for your usual.”

She left, and Bucky and Steve just stared after her for a moment, dumbstruck. Steve was the first to recover, looking quickly around at the other patrons of the diner, presumably to check if any of them had recognized Bucky. It was too late for the lunch rush though so the diner was fairly empty, and either no one had noticed, or they were good enough not to make a fuss. Bucky was painfully aware of the fact that Marie had just more or less outed Steve, and he was worried that his friend would be upset. Once he seemed satisfied that they weren’t about to get mobbed though, Steve just looked at Bucky and shook his head with a disbelieving smile.

“I can’t believe Marie is still here,” he said.

“I just can’t believe she remembers our usual orders.”

“Yeah.” Steve snorted. “She must not’ve seen _all_ of your movies though, or ‘lovely’ would not have been her adjective of choice.”

“Hey!” Bucky kicked his friend lightly under the table. “I bet that’s not the kind of thing you say when you’re championing me online.”

Steve stuck his tongue out at him, and they spent the next few minutes playfully antagonizing one another. When Marie came back, she was carrying plates that looked exactly the same as they had in the nineties. Steve’s bright, delighted smile sent a shot of warmth through Bucky’s chest.

The food was as good as it had always been, and as the two men ate and talked and laughed, something loosened deep inside Bucky’s chest. He realized that he’d been harboring the fear that the years he and Steve had been separated had done something irreparable to their friendship, that they would never fully regain the easy connection they’d once enjoyed. But Bucky realized that while they had both unquestionably changed, grown and matured in ways that they could never have foreseen, the compatibility was still there, the closeness.

Bucky had been in love with the Steve Rogers who had gone along with his crazy plan to jump a train to New York and start a new life. Now he knew for sure that he was just as in love with the Steve Rogers who had waltzed back into his life in a sharp suit with a stupid plan of his own.

He must have gotten a particularly sappy look on his face at that point, because Steve trailed off mid-sentence and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Buck?”

Bucky knew that Steve wasn’t ready for the declarations of love, and that was fine. He’d meant it when he said that he would be happy with wherever this led, so long as he had Steve with him. And if he and Steve never got past friendship, then he would accept it with the gratitude it deserved, even if that meant there was a lot of pining and cold showers in his future.

“I’m just happy, Steve,” he said simply. “Happier than I’ve been in a really long time.”

Steve didn’t seem uncomfortable. He just gave Bucky a slow, wide smile that lit up his whole face.

“I’m glad, Buck,” he said. “And me too.”

*****

Since they still had a little time before the photo shoot, the two men lingered for a while in their booth after they’d finished eating. Steve still couldn’t quite believe that this little piece of their childhood had been preserved like this, but it was a welcome surprise. So was seeing Bucky like this, happy and at ease, as if he really were fifteen again and tragedy had never hijacked his life.

It was a welcome breath of normalcy in what had been an emotionally chaotic morning. The intensity of Bucky’s first interview had left Steve breathless and flustered. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that Bucky wanted him the way Steve had dreamed about all those years ago, when they were teenagers.

The knowledge was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. Because he still wanted Bucky too, wanted to never stop seeing the way Bucky looked at him like he was the sun, wanted to find out what those sinfully pink lips felt like pressed against his own. He wanted Bucky to never leave his life again.

But he also knew it wasn’t that simple. Bucky’s life was not just his own; he was a public figure, living under the constant attention and scrutiny that Steve had spent the past fifteen years of his life carefully avoiding. Add to that the issue of Steve being Bucky’s bodyguard, and you had a solid case for why romance should be out of the question. And yet every moment Steve spent with Bucky made it harder to remember that.

But whatever happened, Steve was determined not to let Bucky slip out of his life again. Fifteen years without him had been more than enough, and now that Steve had him back, he realized how deeply he’d felt his absence. So he was doing his best to act normal and casual, not wanting Bucky to worry while he tried to get his shit together.

It was only with reluctance that they finally paid and left, climbing back into the car for the drive to the Manhattan photo studio. Steve wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when Bucky knocked on the door, but he knew that said door being flung open and a giant blond man flying out of it to envelop Bucky in a bear hug was not it. He tensed, but forced himself to hold his position when he heard Bucky’s laughter.

“Hey, big guy,” the actor chuckled, slapping the taller man on the back. “It’s been too long.”

“Indeed,” the man said, squeezing Bucky even tighter for a moment before releasing him. “I am beginning to think that you value me only for the services I provide.”

He frowned, but even Steve could tell he was joking. The extremely muscular man was wearing faded jeans and an old red t-shirt, his long blonde hair tied back in a sloppy ponytail. He had an accent, not too thick to make him hard to understand, but definitely there. Steve couldn’t quite place it, but he would hazard a guess at Norwegian. The man’s gaze fell on Steve, and he looked to Bucky for an introduction.

“Thor, this is my new bodyguard, Steve Rogers,” Bucky said, his lips curving into a smile around Steve’s name. “Steve, this is Thor. Don’t bother asking what his last name is. He won’t tell anyone. Some artsy shit about it being cooler to only have one name.”

Thor threw Bucky a good-natured scowl, then reached out to shake hands with Steve.

“It is good to meet you, Steve,” he said. His grasp was warm and firm, his smile friendly. Steve liked him instantly.

“You too, Thor.”

“You must truly be a man of valor, to have taken on the challenge of supervising James,” Thor said once he had released Steve’s hand.

It was Bucky’s turn to glare, and Steve just chuckled.

“I don’t know about ‘man of valor’,” he said. “People usually just use the word ‘idiot.’”

Thor laughed, and beckoned both of them inside. The flat was clearly where he lived too, but a large portion was dedicated to a photo studio, with various lights and reflectors and cameras and different colored backdrops. Thor pulled Bucky into better lighting and studied him critically.

“I thought as much,” he muttered.

“What?” Bucky asked, sounding mildly put out by Thor’s tone.

“You were on television this morning. None of those buffoons at the news stations know how to apply makeup properly.”

“I think I know someone who might agree with you,” Bucky said dryly, with a pointed look at Steve.

“I think I may have used the phrase ‘emo teen,’” Steve admitted, unabashed.

“Well, go wash it off,” Thor ordered. “You know I prefer to work with a blank canvas.”

Bucky went to comply, and Thor turned to Steve.

“Feel free to be seated,” he said, waving a large hand at the couches and chairs. “Unless of course you feel the need to check the area for potential threats.”

Steve was pretty sure he was joking.

“Uh, I think we’re good,” he said. “You don’t really come across as a serial killer. But if you do turn out to be one, you should know that I will not hesitate to take you down.”

“I would expect no less,” Thor said with a laugh. “I am glad that James has found another competent guardian.”

“You know Coulson then?” Steve asked curiously.

“Yes, and the guards that came before him. Well, the ones that lasted long enough to meet me. I have been working with James since the very beginning of his acting career.”

“Oh. In that case, I’m a fan of your work. I’ve seen some of your photos of him.”

“Well, I cannot claim all of the credit. James is an easy model to work with. His features would be stunning seen through any camera.”

Steve couldn’t help but agree.

As Thor busied himself with checking his equipment, Steve eyed the rest of the studio area. There was a rack of clothes and props set off to the side. Clint must have had a wardrobe sent over.

“What kinds of things were you planning on doing today?” he asked.

“I intend to experiment. It has been several months since I last worked with James, time enough for me to have come up with several new ideas to try.”

“Uh oh, should I be worried?” Bucky asked, stepping out of the bathroom.

“Fear not, my friend. Have I ever done you injustice?”

“You know you haven’t, buddy. Why do you think I keep coming back?”

Steve only vaguely registered this exchange, because his brain had started short-circuiting. Apparently he and Bucky had had very different understandings of what Thor meant when he’d said to wash up. Not only had Bucky removed his makeup, he had removed his clothes. He was just standing there in unfairly tight underwear, looking expectantly at Thor.

Steve had seen pretty much every part of Bucky before of course, but this was different. Even when Bucky had been shirtless for his exam in Tony’s lab yesterday, Steve had been too focused on assuring himself that his friend wasn’t in any pain to really appreciate the view. Now though, he couldn’t help but stare. Bucky had really grown into himself. His body showed the evidence of the trials he had undergone, and was all the more beautiful for it.

Steve realized that he was ogling and forced himself to focus on Thor instead. The photographer was handing Bucky a pair of dark jeans, which he put on. Then Thor shepherded Bucky into a chair next to a shelf full of cosmetics. The actor sat obediently still while Thor applied his makeup, seeming more comfortable and relaxed than he had at the TV studios. When Thor was finished, he stepped back and turned to Steve.

“There,” he said. “Is that not better than what those monkeys with face-paint did?”

Steve hadn’t thought Bucky looked that bad before, but he had to admit that he did look better now. His skin had a vital glow, and his eyes were bluer than Steve had ever seen them. Bucky gave Steve an ironic smile, and his lips were so distracting that Steve almost forgot to answer Thor.

“Uh, it looks nice, yeah,” he said, heat rising in his cheeks. Bucky raised an eyebrow, looking surprised and pleased with himself.

Thor ordered Bucky out of the chair and positioned him under the lights for some test shots. Steve found himself staring again. He had seen the results of Bucky’s photo shoots before, but that didn’t hold a candle to being here with him now.

Thor made a few more adjustments, then announced that he was ready to start taking the real shots. Bucky winked at Steve and then put on his game face. On Thor’s orders, he started striking a number of poses that by all rights should have looked ridiculous but were unfairly sexy.

Steve couldn’t help being relieved when Thor gave Bucky more clothes to put on. If he’d had to watch that much longer, he was pretty sure his body would have betrayed him embarrassingly. Of course, Bucky was still jaw-droppingly gorgeous in a casual suit with a tie that somehow managed to exactly match the color of his eyes.

Once he could think more clearly, Steve could see how good a photographer Thor was. While drawing had always been Steve’s preferred medium, he’d taken a few photography classes in art school. He knew enough to see that Thor was an expert, using lights and angles perfectly to capture the best of Bucky’s natural beauty.

Steve told him so, and Thor beamed.

“I like this one,” he told Bucky. “Do not lose him.”

“I don’t intend to,” Bucky replied with an earnestness that left Steve’s heart pounding.

The photo shoot lasted a few hours, but the time did not drag. Bucky was clearly at ease with Thor, obeying his instructions without hesitation or questioning. He seemed worried about Steve getting bored though, and he made sure to keep up a steady stream of conversation with him when the camera wasn’t going. Steve appreciated it, but truthfully he wouldn’t have minded just watching. This was Bucky in his element, and it was mesmerizing to see him throw himself into it. It reminded him of their high school theater days, of the passion that had always drawn Steve into every one of Bucky’s performances, no matter how many times he’d seen them.

Steve was a little uncertain when Thor eventually turned his critical gaze on him.

“Have you anything else to wear?” the photographer asked.

“Uh.” Steve glanced down at his casual suit. “No?”

“No matter. You will fit into James’ clothes.”

Steve glanced at Bucky in confusion, but his friend looked equally nonplussed.

“Uh, Thor? What’s wrong with what Steve’s wearing?”

“Nothing, but for the fact that it does not go with anything I have here for you.”

“And that’s relevant because…?”

“Because I will not have you clashing in your pictures.”

“Wait, you want _me_ to get in the pictures?” Steve asked in surprise.

“Well, it seems a shame to waste such a handsome subject. You are by far the most comely bodyguard James has had.”

Bucky grinned, and Steve blushed.

“The man has a point,” Bucky said slyly.

“It also seems that two such good friends should have some pictures together after all this time apart,” Thor added. Steve looked at him sharply, and he raised his hands. “Worry not, my friend; my discretion is absolute. But it is obvious to me how deep a bond the two of you share. I drew my own conclusions, but I do not believe they are incorrect.”

“They’re not,” Bucky said, and his lack of concern made Steve relax a little. If Bucky trusted Thor, it was probably safe. Still, it was a little concerning that yet another person had figured out who Steve was just by observation. “And if Steve’s okay with it, I’d love some pictures of the two of us. For private use only, of course.”

He gave Steve a hopeful look, his eyes bright. Steve thought about the most recent picture he had of the two of them, not counting the one that had wound up on tumblr. It was an old Polaroid that a classmate’s parent had snapped of them on the day of one of Bucky’s plays. Bucky had been in his Shakespearean costume and Steve in his black crew clothes, his stage manager’s headset looped around his neck. They had their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, though Steve was almost a head shorter than his friend. They were bright-eyed and smiling, flushed with the success of pulling off the show. Steve had hung onto that picture, bringing it with him when he moved back to New York. Even now it was safely in his apartment, paperclipped into one of his sketchbooks.

So much had changed since the day that photo was taken, so much had happened to them both. It was a miracle that they had the chance to take new pictures together, and Steve found that he didn’t want to waste the opportunity.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he said, smiling when Bucky’s face lit up. “But I’m not sure about his clothes fitting me.”

“You haven’t put on _that_ much muscle,” Bucky snorted. “Besides, I accidentally stretched out a few of your shirts when we were kids. Now’s your chance for payback.”

Steve chuckled at the memory of Bucky sheepishly handing over shirts that he had put on by mistake, testing the limits of the fabric’s elasticity.

“I seem to remember you ripping a few seams, actually,” Steve said, accepting the pile of clothes that Thor had selected for him.

“Don’t get any ideas!” Bucky called after him as he retreated into the bathroom to change.

Bucky’s clothes were a bit snug on him, but he certainly wasn’t in danger of ripping any seams. Steve was a little surprised to find that they actually smelled like Bucky, which meant that Clint must have had them sent over from the actor’s personal wardrobe. He liked the idea of wearing his friend’s clothes, probably a little too much.

It was something he had done a lot after the disaster with the train. He’d missed Bucky so much it was like a physical ache, so he’d raided his friend’s half of the closet and stolen his shirts and sweaters. They’d hung off his skinny frame, but that hadn’t bothered him. He’d been enveloped in his friend’s scent, and it had been like getting a hug from him.

But eventually Bucky’s scent had faded from the fabric, and it had left Steve feeling more lonely and desolate than ever. Even after he was adopted by the Starks and his life improved dramatically, Steve had never really stopped missing that smell. He wondered if Bucky would mind if he stole some of his t-shirts after this.

When he finished getting dressed, he stepped out of the bathroom and spread his arms out for inspection.

“Well?” he asked cheerfully, already more enthusiastic about the photo shoot. “How do I look?”

“Like the finest of models,” Thor assured him.

Bucky said nothing, and when Steve looked at him, he suspected that his friend was having a similar experience to the one that had plagued him earlier. Bucky’s eyes were wide and dark as he stared at Steve, and he seemed to be having trouble swallowing. It was a heady thing, to realize that he affected Bucky as much as Bucky affected him.

“Uh, good, yeah,” Bucky said belatedly.

Steve smirked and went to stand beside him, but suddenly he found himself sitting in a makeup chair with a giant Norwegian standing over him.

“Uh thanks, but I really don’t need-”

“Were you not just remarking on my skill?” Thor asked. “Just because these pictures will not be for the public does not mean that they will not be up to my usual standard.”

Steve caught Bucky’s eye and saw that his friend was struggling not to laugh.

“I’d do what he says, Steve,” he advised. “He seems all sweet and cuddly now, but you don’t want to see him angry.”

Steve looked dubiously up at Thor, who certainly did look like he could be intimidating if he wanted.

“You’re not gonna put eyeliner on me, are you?”

“Just close your eyes.”

Steve gulped and obeyed. It was actually surprisingly pleasant. Thor’s hands were gentle as he worked, and he stayed safely away from the eyeliner pencil. When Thor announced that he was done and allowed him to look in the mirror, Steve had to admit that the end result was pretty good. He didn’t look like he was wearing makeup, he just looked five times better than he did on a normal day. He glanced at Bucky, who gave him a wink and a thumbs-up.

“Are you ready to begin?” Thor asked.

Steve nodded and let the photographer position him next to Bucky. He blinked, momentarily blinded by the lights.

“You get used to it,” Bucky said with a smirk. “But no one said that this industry is without its trials.”

“Yeah, looking gorgeous for cameras must be so hard for you,” Steve said, rolling his eyes.

Bucky grinned.

“You really think I’m gorgeous?”

Steve felt a flush creep into his cheeks, but he held Bucky’s gaze.

“I’d have to be blind not to,” he said.

Some of the playfulness faded from Bucky’s smile, leaving something more intense in its wake. He leaned forward slowly until his lips were at Steve’s ear.

“I think you’re gorgeous too, you know.”

The murmured words sent a shiver down Steve’s spine, and warmth pooled in his gut. He gave Bucky a smile that was probably slightly flustered as the other man pulled back. A faint glimmer of hope appeared in Bucky’s eyes, and it made Steve’s stomach swoop as if he had missed a step going down the stairs.

“If you’re ready to start?” Thor said pointedly.

Steve startled. He’d forgotten that the photographer was there. Judging by Bucky’s surprised and sheepish look, he had too.

“Sure thing,” Bucky said. “Just say where you want us.”

Thor gave them basic instructions to start with, having them stand side by side or with one slightly in front of the other. When Bucky dug his fingers into the ticklish spot on Steve’s side, and Steve retaliated by grabbing him and ruffling his carefully styled hair, the photographer let it turn into something more natural. He just let them interact how they wanted, only occasionally commanding them to shift so that he could get better light or focus.

Steve was surprised by how easy it was to just be with Bucky, to let everything else fall away. He forgot that they had ever been separated, forgot that they’d ever been through war, forgot that Bucky was a famous actor and Steve was just his bodyguard. For those moments in the studio, they were just two best friends spending time together.

Eventually the situation dissolved into a wrestling match to prove that Steve could actually win fights now and that Bucky hadn’t gone soft since leaving the military. Soon they were both laughing too hard to hang onto each other, and they both collapsed onto the floor of the studio.

Steve felt bad about getting his borrowed clothes dirty, so he got up and pulled Bucky with him. Thor was watching them with an amused gleam in his eye.

“I can see why you were so joyful about your reunion,” he said. “Truly your bond is something to treasure.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said with a soft smile.

He brushed some of the dust from Steve’s shoulders. Steve returned the favor by finger-combing Bucky’s hair back into place. Then he remembered the hair-related awkwardness from the night before, and snatched his hand away.

The photo shoot had taken so long that it was dinnertime by the time they finished. They decided to eat with Thor, whose girlfriend had brought home enough Chinese food to feed an army. Jane was just as personable as her boyfriend, and the conversation well outlasted the food. Thor and Jane were in no rush to get rid of their guests, so it was pushing ten o’clock when Steve and Bucky returned to Stark Tower. They boarded the elevator, and Steve raised an eyebrow suspiciously at the ceiling when it did not stop at his floor, but kept moving swiftly upwards.

“I don’t suppose another one of my requests is being overridden?” he asked Jarvis.

_“My apologies, Captain,”_ the AI replied.

Steve just sighed and rolled his eyes, wondering what Tony had in store for them now. He turned to Bucky, who looked amused.

“Is this a frequent occurrence?” the actor asked.

“You can see why I chose to live in DC with Sam.”

The elevator doors finally opened, letting them out on Tony’s main floor. The billionaire was waiting for them with a bucket of popcorn and an unabashed grin.

“Movie night,” he declared before the other two men could even ask.

Bucky and Steve exchanged a look.

“Is there any point in arguing?” Bucky asked.

“None, I’m afraid,” Steve sighed.

They followed a smug Tony into the TV room, which was really more like a small movie theater. Steve actually really did like this room. He had spent many good hours here, arguing good-naturedly with his brother about movies and shows. Bruce was waiting for them on one of the couches, looking equal parts amused and apologetic.

“I did try to talk him out of this,” he told Steve and Bucky as they sat down next to him.

“And because he’s Tony, you had zero luck,” Bucky concluded. “No worries, Doc. I’m always down for a good movie.”

“I’m really not sure you’re in for a _good_ movie,” Steve warned. “Tony’s taste in film can be a little…”

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky said, grimacing. “I just remembered the last movie he made me watch.”

“How bad?”

“Let’s just say it was called _Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead_ , and leave it at that.”

Steve winced in sympathy.

“That was a cinematic masterpiece, and you know it,” Tony asserted, dropping onto the couch and promptly sticking his feet on Steve’s lap. Since he was wearing socks that looked like they had been washed within the last week, Steve didn’t bother pushing him away.

“Dare I ask what’s on tap for tonight?” he inquired, grabbing a handful of popcorn from Tony’s bucket.

It turned out to be _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ , which Steve had never seen before but actually was a really good movie. It was also made even more interesting by Bucky’s commentary. Apparently the actor had met half the cast, and seemed to have an entertaining story about each of them. They had to pause the movie more than once while Bucky launched into a tale that had them all gasping with laughter.

By the time it was over though, Steve and Bucky were both exhausted. Steve couldn’t help being a little grateful for the distraction that Tony had inadvertently provided, because it meant that he and Bucky were too tired to do anything but bid each other a quiet goodnight before retiring to their separate rooms. As much as Steve treasured every moment spent with his friend, he knew that they were in an odd kind of stasis. He was almost certain by this point that the attraction between them was mutual, and he didn’t know what to do. The only thing more painful than the idea of keeping Bucky at an emotional distance was the idea of losing him entirely because of a failed relationship.

But Steve’s heart had been fighting against his fear and self-control for years, and he was pretty sure that the tide of the battle was turning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead_ is an honest-to-god real movie. I love Hollywood.


	9. Chapter 9

The strangled, choked-off scream had Bucky out of his bed and halfway to the door before he even realized he was awake. He was used to screams while he was sleeping, but they were usually his, and every part of him knew that the one he had just heard was most definitely not. He sprinted into Steve’s room, heart pounding.

With the way his friend had sounded, Bucky half expected to see some kind of attacker, but there was no one but Steve, who was clearly locked in a nightmare. He wasn’t thrashing around like Bucky tended to, but he was rigid and shuddering violently, his breath coming in terrified, desperate gasps.

Bucky was at his side in an instant, kneeling beside the bed and cupping Steve’s face with his human hand.

“Shh, Steve, it’s all right,” he murmured into his friend’s ear. “Wake up, Steve, it’s just a nightmare. It’s all right. I’m here.”

He placed his left hand on Steve’s chest, which was heaving like he was having an asthma attack.

“Come on Stevie, wake up,” he said more firmly, heart aching at the frightened and pained expression on his friend’s face. “I’m right here, Steve. I’ve got you.”

He hesitated for just a moment, before leaning in and pressing his lips to Steve’s temple. Steve’s panicked gasps faded into a sigh, some of the rigid tension leaving his body. His shivers lingered though, as if he were lying in a snowdrift instead of his warm bed.

“You with me, Steve?” Bucky asked, pulling back a little and tapping Steve’s chest gently.

Steve didn’t open his eyes, his face still pinched with pain, but his head turned towards his friend’s voice.

“Bucky?” he asked in a whisper that sounded almost pleading.

Bucky wondered with a pang if Steve’s eyes were closed because he genuinely wasn’t sure Bucky would be there if he opened them. It made him wonder how many times Steve had been forced to ride out his nightmares alone.

“I’m here,” he promised again, stroking his fingers through Steve’s sweaty hair.

Steve opened his eyes then, and they sought out Bucky instantly. He didn’t smile, looking too drained for that, but he did relax a little more. One of his hands crept up to grasp Bucky’s metal one, still resting on his chest.

“Thanks,” he murmured. He just held Bucky’s gaze for a long moment, clearly needing the comfort of the contact. But then he shook his head a little as if to clear it. “I’m all right.”

Bucky knew that he was being offered an excuse to leave, because Steve was an idiot.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said, though it didn’t come out as dryly as he had intended, probably because he was still rattled himself. He hated seeing his friend so scared.

Steve didn’t seem inclined to argue. He just closed his eyes again and leaned into Bucky’s palm. He was still shaking, and Bucky realized that despite how much he was sweating, Steve was cold. He stood and peeled the soaked sheets away from his friend’s body, before circling to the other side of the bed and climbing in. He wrapped his arms around Steve and pulled him close, ignoring the sweat that quickly dampened his shirt.

“Is this okay?” he asked softly, not wanting Steve to feel like he was taking advantage.

Steve just nodded, pressing his face into Bucky’s neck and trying to breathe deeply. Bucky rubbed soothing circles into his back, the way he had done so many times when Steve was sick, the way Steve had done for him after his own nightmare, and eventually those terrible shudders eased. Steve made no move to pull away though, seeming content to lie in his friend’s arms. The trust he still had in Bucky felt like a wondrous and daunting gift.

“I’m here,” he repeated softly, making it a vow to both of them.

“Thank you,” Steve whispered again, so quiet that Bucky wasn’t even sure he’d heard it.

There was a long moment of silence. Bucky kept rubbing Steve’s back, but he didn’t push him to talk.

“Do you think we could maybe turn on the lights?” Steve asked eventually, his voice small and ragged.

Bucky looked down at him, but all he could see was the top of his head. He knew it must have taken a lot for Steve to ask. He had a feeling it wasn’t just the dark that was bothering him.

He climbed out of the bed, but instead of crossing to the light switch, he grasped Steve by his sweaty hands and tugged him to his feet, before looping an arm around his waist. Steve went without protest as Bucky guided him into the living room, which was dimly lit by a single lamp, and deposited him on the couch. Then Bucky went to the record player and selected an old album that Steve had always liked because it had been his mother’s favorite. Soft 40’s jazz began to fill the air, and at last the hint of a smile touched Steve’s face. He didn’t say anything, but the look he gave Bucky was more than enough.

Bucky sat beside him and took his hand, waiting to see if Steve was ready to talk. The light and music already seemed to be helping ground him. The tension was mostly gone from his body, but Bucky could still see the remnants of fear and pain in his eyes.

“It was the plane crash.”

Bucky’s heart clenched at the quiet admission, a fresh wave of guilt sweeping through him. Steve had been on two flights in as many days because of him. He knew that there was no way he could have known about Steve’s phobia, but it didn’t help.

“I crashed into water, did I tell you that?”

Bucky shook his head wordlessly, suddenly understanding why Steve had been gasping so desperately earlier.

“I was…I wasn’t quite awake, but part of me could still feel the water rushing in, could feel…”

He took a deep breath, and his grip on Bucky’s hand tightened and then vanished completely. He took hold of the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it slowly over his head, wary gaze on Bucky’s face.

Bucky managed to hold back his gasp, but it was a near thing. Steve was beautiful, golden skin over sculpted muscle, but that wasn’t what had caught his attention. There were thin, puckered lines marring his torso, scars telling a tale of pain and danger.

“Turns out planes have a lot of sharp edges when you smash them into a frozen lake,” Steve said, and though his words were light, his tone was flat.

Without thinking, Bucky reached out to trace a scar in the middle of his chest, a jagged starburst right over his heart. Steve shivered at the touch, and Bucky pulled his hand away.

“It’s all right,” Steve said softly. “You can touch them.”

So he did, running his hand over the evidence of just how close he had come to losing Steve permanently without even knowing it. The scars weren’t numerous, but they were chilling. No wonder Steve was having nightmares.

“I’m beginning to see why Tony had a hard time visiting you in the hospital,” Bucky murmured when he could speak. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, to see you hurt like this and not be able to do anything.”

“I can.”

The look on Steve’s face hit Bucky like a punch.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “I guess you can.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, but what came out was “I can’t let you get on another plane for me in a few days.”

Steve shook his head and tugged his shirt back on.

“Don’t think about it like that,” he said. “It’s something I need to do for me, as much as you. I need to get past the fear.”

His stubborn expression was so familiar that Bucky knew there was no point in arguing. He also knew that this was something Steve was strong enough to handle, painful as it might be.

“Then you will get past it,” he told his friend, his faith absolute. “And you won’t have to do it alone.”

Steve gave him a small, grateful smile, and Bucky was pleased to see that some of the pained weight had faded from his eyes, leaving them decidedly less haunted. Then he let out a tired sigh and leaned back to rest his head on the couch cushion.

“I really am all right, Buck,” he said, and this time Bucky believed him. “The nightmares will probably never go away completely, but they’re just nightmares. I survived, and I choose to dwell on that.”

Bucky settled in next to him, their arms pressed together.

“I’m really glad you survived.” He knew he’d said the same thing on the plane, but it bore repeating. Even though he’d only had Steve back in his life for a few days, he already couldn’t imagine what it would have been like without him, what it would have been like to turn on the news one day and see that Steve had been alive all this time but then died before Bucky had gotten to see him again. Even more unthinkable was the idea of losing him now.

“Thanks. So am I.”

Steve turned his head a little to give Bucky another soft smile. Then he snorted.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that it’s been like two days and this has already become the heart-to-heart couch.”

Bucky wrinkled his brow for a moment, confused, before remembering the Romeo and Juliet conversation. He chuckled.

“Well, at least it’s comfortable,” he said ruefully. “If we’re gonna angst, we may as well do it on plushy blue suede.”

Steve’s smile widened for a moment, but then he looked thoughtful and serious.

“Since we’re on the topic of angst and scars…”

“Began no good conversation ever,” Bucky cut in.

“Listen, I was kidding about this being the heart-to-heart couch, but there’s something that’s been bugging me. And I get that it’s personal, so you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, it’s just…”

He trailed off, looking troubled and uncertain. It was a look that Bucky didn’t like seeing on his face.

“For you, Steve, I will endure another heart-to-heart,” he said with an overly dramatic sigh.

Steve’s answering smile faded quickly. His hand twitched as though he wanted to take Bucky’s, but he stopped himself.

“What did Brock Rumlow do to you?”

Bucky froze, the question not what he’d been expecting at all.

“What?” he managed.

“You looked really upset after we ran into him in the club. It was more than just the awkwardness of being exes. The way he was talking to you…I just want to know how hard I have to punch him in the face when I find an excuse.”

Bucky grimaced and let his body sag into the cushions behind him. He closed his eyes. He owed Steve the truth and he would give it to him, but it would be a lot easier to do that without actually looking at him.

“I’ve been with a lot of people, Steve,” he said quietly, face tilted towards the ceiling. “But the number of actual relationships I’ve been in? Those I could count on one hand. Rumlow was the first person I thought I might really have a shot at being happy with, after…well, you know. He showed me how to navigate Hollywood and fame and he was just so charismatic and understanding and he made me feel less fucked up…He really meant a lot to me. I would call it love, but I know how much more love can be. It could have been though, in time. For me, at least.”

“What changed?” Steve asked, and there was a dark undercurrent in his voice that Bucky wasn’t sure he wanted to analyze.

“Nothing,” Bucky replied with a bitter laugh. “For him, anyway. He felt the same thing for me as he always had during our relationship, which was absolutely jack shit. But it was only after I’d withdrawn from the running for a role we were both competing for that I realized that.”

“He…?”

“Seduced me because he could tell I was gonna get the part?” Bucky said with a humorless smile. “Yeah. And I fell for it. I was so sure that it was real. I even got into a huge argument with Clint about it, can you believe that? I had to call him to get him to pull me out of consideration, and he tried to talk some sense into me, and I just lost it. Screamed about how Brock was the best thing that had happened to me in almost years, and I wasn’t about to lose that over some movie.

“But then Rumlow stopped answering my calls and texts, just dropped out of my life completely. When I finally confronted him in person, he just _laughed_. He’s got the cruelest laugh, Steve, you can’t imagine. I’d never heard his real laugh until that day.”

Bucky fell silent, remembering the slow creep of cold horror through his veins as he’d finally understood what Rumlow had done. He’d spent the entirety of the following week buried in a bottle, until Clint had come over and bullied him back into something resembling sobriety.

“I wonder how his laugh will sound when it’s coming through a broken nose,” Steve said, his voice so much darker than Bucky was used to.

Bucky opened his eyes and turned his head. Steve was staring at the ceiling, his jaw set and his hands clenched into fists. The idea that he was furious on Bucky’s behalf made the actor feel better about the entire situation than he ever had before. It was much harder to care about a toerag like Rumlow when he had Steve in his corner.

“It’d probably be even uglier,” he said. He hesitated. He knew he could leave it at that, and part of him wanted to, but he wanted Steve to understand everything. “But that’s not even the end of it. The movie totally bombed. Rumlow took a lot of crap for it, and he decided that it was my fault, because the role should’ve been mine.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish.” Bucky bit his lip and frowned down at his hands, trying to find the words to relate the next part, the most difficult part. “I’m sure you’re under no illusions about how heavy a drinker I’ve been for the last few years,” he said eventually. “I know Clint must have briefed you before you took the job.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Buck,” Steve interrupted gently. “I know everyone copes differently.”

“Yeah, but that’s not…I never…” Bucky sighed. “It was only ever alcohol. It was insanely reckless amounts of alcohol sometimes, yeah, but no matter how bad it got, I never turned to drugs. Not once.”

“That’s good…?” Steve said, his tone making it clear that he didn’t understand where this was going.

“It was pretty much the only victory I could claim for myself at times,” Bucky said. “There were so many things I hated about myself, but at least I was clean.”

The look Steve gave him was full of such heartbreak that Bucky almost lost the wherewithal to continue. But he’d promised himself that he would give his friend the truth, all of it.

“Rumlow knew that. He knew how much being clean meant to me. So one night, about a week after his movie had tanked, he came by my place with a case of beer and that goddamn charming smile of his.” Bucky shook his head, frustrated with his past self. “I should never have let him in the door, but it had been long enough since he dumped me that I’d mostly gotten over what he did. I’d made it past anger, and I guess I moved on to desperation, because when he started chatting me up, talking and laughing like nothing had ever happened, I let myself believe that there could still be something there. I didn’t even notice that he kept handing me beers without ever drinking anything himself, which really should’ve sent up some red flags.”

“Tell me he didn’t…” Steve was looking faintly nauseated now, but the steely anger in his eyes had only grown stronger. “I swear to god, Buck, if he so much as touched you-”

“That’s not what he was after, Steve,” Bucky assured his friend, his tone grim. The shameful truth was that Brock wouldn’t have needed to get Bucky drunk in order to take advantage of him sexually that night. That was how little respect he’d had for himself, how desperate and lonely he’d been. “But after he’d been there for a few hours, he pulled this little plastic bag out of his pocket and just gave me this _smile_.”

Bucky took a deep breath, skin crawling at the memory of that awful, feral smirk. He wondered how he had ever found Rumlow’s smile charming.

“It was coke. Rumlow had two lines laid out on the coffee table before I even really registered what was going on. But then I told him to stop, told him that I still wasn’t into drugs and I didn’t want them in my house. He didn’t listen, just put two more lines down and handed me this cut-off straw. I tried to give it back to him, but he wouldn’t…He told me that it wasn’t like it was any worse than some of the other crap that I’d done to myself, that it was no big deal. He told me that it was way better than alcohol for making the pain go away. He knew me better than anyone, knew all my weak spots, and he used them. He was so damn _persuasive_ , and I was just so…before I even knew it, I was kneeling in front of the coffee table with that straw in my nose.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve whispered. There was no judgment in his gaze, just pain and guilt.

“I couldn’t do it,” Bucky said. “I wanted to. In that moment, Steve, I swear I wanted the oblivion so bad…but I just couldn’t.”

Steve was silent, just staring at Bucky with wide eyes, waiting for him to continue at his own pace.

“It was because of your mom, you know,” Bucky told him. “Remember that day I was over at your place, teaching you how to play Crazy Eights, and she walked into the kitchen looking like someone had dropped a million pounds on her shoulders and told her to run a marathon?”

Steve frowned thoughtfully for a moment before the recollection dawned.

“I remember,” he said softly. “She stared at us for so long, I was sure we were in trouble for something, but then she just pulled us both into a hug so tight I thought I was gonna have an asthma attack.”

“She’d just watched one of her patients die from a ruptured bag of drugs in his gut,” Bucky said. “Just a kid, only a few years older than we were at the time.”

But the boy hadn’t just been some random teenager. He’d been one of Sarah Rogers’ patients for months, battling leukemia. He’d won that battle, only to realize that his parents were facing hospital bills they had no way of paying. He’d been recruited as a drug mule with the promise of paying off his family’s debt, but had died on his very first run. Sarah had been a part of the family’s joy at their son’s victory over cancer, and she had held the parents as they wept over his loss to drugs.

“I’d never seen her that serious before,” Bucky recalled. “And then she sat us down and told us what happened and she begged us, _begged_ us, not to ever let ourselves get involved in that world. We promised her we wouldn’t, and I _meant_ that promise, even if I didn’t realize how hard it would be for me to keep. So when I was staring at those little white lines on my coffee table, all I could think about her. She always treated me like a son, loved me like a son, and she only ever asked one thing of me.”

That wasn’t true. Sarah Rogers had asked one last thing of Bucky, when she was dying in the hospital that she had spent so many years bringing joy to. She’d asked him to look after Steve, and it had been easy as breathing to say yes, of course, he always had and he always would. But he’d broken that promise just a few years later, and Steve didn’t need to hear what that had done to him.

“I’d let so many people down in my life, but I couldn’t let her down, not like that.” _Not again_. “So I got up and threw the straw at Rumlow and told him to just take his drugs and go. He got so _angry_ , started yelling all these horrible things. It was awful, but it made me realize, _really_ realize who he was and what he was trying to do. He’d never wanted to make peace with me. He’d come to my house that night to break me, to take away the last good thing I had and send me over a cliff he knew I couldn’t come back from. He wanted to get me hooked, make me spin out. He knew that if I took that step, I’d probably be dead within a year. And I’ll always be ashamed of how close he got to doing that to me, to getting me to do it to myself. But at least I finally _learned_ that time, and I never let Rumlow get that close to me again. But every time I see him, it’s a reminder of how weak and stupid I was.”

Bucky lapsed into silence. He could feel how tense Steve was, could see the muscle twitching in his clenched jaw.

“Forget punching him in the face,” Steve said eventually. “I’m gonna kill him.”

Bucky sighed.

“Maybe you could just egg his car instead?” he suggested with a weak smile. “Less violent. More cathartic. Less likely to land you in prison.”

Steve scowled at Bucky, clearly not appreciating having his words from the day before thrown back at him. Then he let out a sigh of his own.

“This is completely different and you know it,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Did you at least call the police? Has Rumlow tried to do anything to you since then?”

“No and no. This was before I had Coulson, so I did have to threaten to call the police that night at my house, but once Rumlow realized I was serious, he left. He hasn’t done anything since then. He knows the story wouldn’t look good for him either. That’s why he always insisted on keeping our relationship a secret when we were dating; he knew how it was going to end and he didn’t want people to know who he really is.”

Steve didn’t look satisfied with that answer, so Bucky continued. “Honestly, there’s not much the police could have done. I mean they might have been able to stick Rumlow with a possession charge, but his lawyer would’ve made that go away, and he would hardly have been the first actor to be forgiven for it. But he hadn’t actually _done_ anything to me, not in the eyes of the law. I just wanted to forget about it.”

Steve just studied him for a long moment, before nodding reluctantly. He slung an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and the actor leaned gratefully into his side.

“Well it’s obviously your choice,” Steve said. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you should forget about it. I think you should remember it as a mark of your strength, Buck, not your weakness. You said Rumlow knew exactly what buttons to push to manipulate you, and he pushed them all. But he still couldn’t get you to break. That’s a victory, a huge one, and you should treasure it. I’m proud of you.”

Bucky tucked his face against Steve’s shirt and squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down the sudden swell of emotion in his chest. Steve’s faith, his _pride_ in him felt so undeserved, but it meant more to him than he could possibly say.

Steve seemed to understand everything he couldn’t put into words. He just held Bucky tighter and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head.

“I thought I was supposed to be comforting you,” Bucky complained once he was sure that he could speak without his voice cracking.

“Well that’s kind of the amazing thing about friendship, Buck. We can comfort each other.”

Despite everything, Bucky smiled.

“But I have to ask,” Steve said, sounding nervous in a way that didn’t bode well. “All of the drinking, the issues you seem to have with yourself…is that because of me?”

Bucky grimaced and pulled away, knowing that he had to meet Steve’s gaze for this portion of the conversation.

“A lot of it,” he admitted reluctantly, knowing that the words would hurt Steve but not having it in him to be dishonest. “Thinking that I’d gotten you killed was more than I could stand. You already know I tried to kill myself after it happened, and I wasn’t exaggerating yesterday when I told that interviewer that there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about you. But you were also the last good thing I had left, and losing you after I lost my family, my whole life…well, when I walked into that army recruitment office, I was…a sort of empty wreck, I guess. But the military gave me a purpose, a family of sorts, although I didn’t let anyone in my unit get as close to me as I should have. But I was coping. I hadn’t forgiven myself, but I’d learned to live with it. But then…”

Bucky looked away again, swallowing hard.

“Then my unit drove into an ambush, and I watched more people I cared about die around me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, pinned under a Humvee.” Bucky rubbed his metal forearm absently, trying to banish the phantom pain that the memory brought with it. “And then I had to listen to the screams of the survivors as they were tortured, and all I could think about was how many more people I’d failed. Even after you and your team rescued us, I couldn’t face the other survivors. I couldn’t help seeing myself as toxic, and I didn’t think I deserved to be around them. After that, after I got discharged, that was the worst. I’d lost the only people I had left, and I’d lost the purpose that the military gave me. I had nightmares every night, and I couldn’t see the point of anything anymore. That was when the drinking started.

“I was in a bad place when Tony offered to build me a new arm, but he and Bruce really helped. Tony even got me my first audition when I mentioned that I had an interest in acting. But the pain was still there. So the alcohol was still there. And it wasn’t like I was getting drunk every night. It was just that when I got started, I couldn’t make myself stop, because it made things more bearable, helped me forget everything I was missing, helped me get past feeling like a fraud and a failure.”

“You were never a failure, Bucky,” Steve said firmly, and Bucky met his gaze again. There was nothing but tenderness and understanding in those blue eyes he loved so well. “I mean it. Even if I had died that day, it wouldn’t have been your fault.

Bucky opened his mouth to protest, but Steve didn’t give him the chance.

“I mean it,” he repeated. “The train may have been your idea, but I knew the risks. And you were trying to save me, remember? You were trying to get me away from Pierce. You were free, Buck; you could’ve gone anywhere after Pierce let you go, but instead you risked your life to keep me safe, almost died trying. As for your unit…I read the reports. I know there was nothing you or anyone could’ve done to stop the attack. And I know that after you were captured, you antagonized the terrorists to draw their attention away from your teammates. You got them to torture you more often instead of your men. Tell me again how all of that makes you a failure?”

Bucky had no answer for him. Phil had made similar arguments, once he realized that so many of Bucky’s issues stemmed from guilt, but he’d never had the full story, never known about Steve. Now though, hearing everything from the person Bucky thought he’d let down the worst, the words finally began to gain traction in his mind and heart.

He’d made mistakes, yes. Big ones. But maybe he was also taking responsibility for things that had never been his fault. Maybe some of the demons that had been haunting him for years were not his to deal with.

He still had trouble seeing it the way Steve did, but he thought he might be a little further down the road to forgiving himself.

“Thank you,” was all he could say.

Steve just took his hand and squeezed it.

After a moment, Bucky added, “and so you know, I’m not planning on using alcohol as an anesthetic anymore. When I drink now, it’s gonna be because I want to, not because I feel like I need to.”

He knew that would be easier said than done, but he meant it.

Steve gave him a smile, tired but heartfelt and genuine. Bucky could see the pride in his eyes again, and it warmed him to the core. He leaned back into his friend’s side and they sat like that for a while, neither of them saying anything.

“I finally learned how to dance, you know,” Steve said eventually.

Bucky looked at him, eyebrow raised. Steve’s attempts at dancing when they were kids had been few and far between, but unfailingly entertaining for anyone watching. It was one of the reasons Steve had decided he liked being behind the stage much better than being on it.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. My ex-girlfriend taught me when she and I worked together. We were in this bombed-out little hostel in Somalia, and I mentioned that I didn’t know how. She wouldn’t stand for that, so she took out her little handheld radio and found the least staticky channel, and she did her best to teach me.”

Bucky felt his eyebrows creep ever higher on his face, even as a slow smile stretched across his lips.

“You askin’ me to dance, Stevie?”

“I might be,” Steve replied with a smile of his own. “Would you say yes if I was?”

“I’d consider it.”

Bucky stood and held out his right hand to Steve, who took it and rose. They moved to the empty space in the middle of the living room, beside the record player. The music playing wasn’t suitable for anything fast, and Steve did not seem to mind this at all. He placed one warm hand in Bucky’s, and the other on his shoulder, letting him take the lead.

“I should warn you that while Peggy was an excellent teacher, I was a terrible student,” he said. “So your toes will probably be in peril for the duration of this dance.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Bucky tugged Steve into motion, and they started a slow circuit around the room, carefully dodging furniture. Steve hadn’t been lying about being a bad dancer, but there was something terribly endearing about the way he bit his lip in concentration as he stumbled through the steps, a light flush rising in his cheeks.

He was clearly putting a great deal of effort into not stepping on Bucky’s bare feet, so the actor deliberately stepped on Steve’s toes with careful lightness, drawing a laugh from his friend. Bucky laughed right along with him, and despite the heartache of the evening, he was swept away by real joy.

He lost track of how long they danced, but it felt like too soon when the record player went silent. Steve sighed and drew them both to a halt, but he didn’t let go of Bucky. They just looked at each other for a moment, and Steve’s eyes were frustratingly indiscernible.

“Would you mind if I…” he began hesitantly. “Can I stay with you? Just for the rest of the night?”

Bucky knew he was only talking about sleeping, but the request filled him with warmth. He closed what little distance there was left between him and Steve, pulling the taller man into a brief hug.

“You never have to ask, Steve,” he said. “Come on.”

He and Steve retreated to Bucky’s room, and the actor left the door open so that some of the light from the hallway could seep in. Hopefully it would be enough to prevent any further nightmares for Steve, although Bucky couldn’t help hoping that his own presence would do that better than any lamp could.

They were evidently both too tired for awkwardness, because despite the UST that had been mounting the day before, it was as easy as it had always been to climb into bed with Steve. By unspoken agreement, they both stayed on their own sides of the mattress, but Bucky could still feel his friend’s presence beside him, warm and solid. It made him ache with longing, but was still no less comforting than it had always been. The sound of Steve’s breathing, steady and even now, lulled him quickly back to sleep.

*****

Even after Steve felt Bucky relax into sleep beside him, he couldn’t make himself do the same. He was exhausted, both from his nightmare and the following conversation, but his thoughts were far too tumultuous to let him sleep.

He was in deep trouble.

How the hell had this happened? He had just been trying to ease back into the world after his traumatic exit from the military. He’d thought that being a bodyguard would _simplify_ his life. He should’ve known from the second Fury said Bucky’s name that there was no chance in hell of that happening.

Because he knew now, that things couldn’t keep going the way they had, that he couldn’t keep holding Bucky at arm’s length out of fear. Not after Bucky had coaxed him tenderly from the worst nightmare he’d had in weeks, not after Bucky had bared the most vulnerable parts of his soul, not after laughter had filled the air and chased away the echoes of screams. Not after Steve had realized that he was hopelessly and completely in love with his best friend.

But he was more scared than ever. Because he knew now, that he wouldn’t be able to stand losing Bucky again. He wouldn’t be able to just go to Fury and ask for a new assignment if things didn’t work out. And he couldn’t keep pretending that they were just friends, not when they both so clearly wanted more.

But more was _so much_ more. And Steve was terrified of it.

He found himself climbing carefully out of the bed, not wanting to disturb Bucky. A thought had occurred to him, and the fact that it was his best option was frankly a disturbing one. But he was getting desperate.

He slipped out of his apartment and boarded the elevator, and soon found himself standing outside of his brother’s lab, peering through the sliding glass doors. As he’d suspected, Tony was inside, bent over something on one of his worktables. Pepper was at a conference in Vancouver, and the inventor’s insomnia always got worse when his girlfriend was gone.

Steve squared his shoulders and stepped forward, but started to regret his decision before the automatic doors even had time to slide closed behind him. Tony’s head shot up and he fixed Steve with a shark-like grin.

“Oh, this oughtta be good,” he said. “You only come to my lab voluntarily when you’re really desperate.”

Steve glowered at him and tried to retreat, but his back hit the reinforced glass of the door, which refused to open. He scowled at the ceiling.

“Your AI is a dirty rotten traitor,” he informed Tony.

“Nah, he just knows where his loyalties lie,” Tony replied cheerfully. “Pull up a workbench, bro. Dr. Stark is in.”

Steve snorted but went to sit on the bench indicated.

“I realize you have a stupid number of doctorates, but I’m fairly certain that none of them are in psychology.”

Tony waved that away carelessly and turned back to the hologram he’d been working on.

“Don’t need to be a shrink to know what’s bothering you. I saw you ogling that poor man tonight.”

“I was not-” Steve began automatically, but then broke off, realizing it was probably true. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted quietly.

“I can’t believe you actually came to me for relationship advice. Isn’t Wilson, like, a professional at this kind of thing? Is your phone broken? Because that I can fix.”

“Sam doesn’t know Bucky,” Steve sighed. “Besides, he’s not famous.”

“So you came to me, the poster-boy for healthy celebrity relationships?”

Steve grimaced. Tony had a point. Before Pepper, the longest relationship he’d been in had lasted about two weeks. But if he was being honest with himself, he knew why he was here.

“No,” he sighed. “I came to my big brother.”

Tony’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a moment. It was no secret how much he and Steve cared about one another, but they rarely put that into words. Apparently it made Tony realize what kind of place Steve was in.

“Okay,” he said quietly, rare seriousness overtaking his expression.

He crossed his arms, waiting. Steve realized that he didn’t know how to start.

“I know my skills are expansive and extraordinary, but even I can’t read minds, Steve,” Tony said eventually. “And if you want me to be your relationship guru, you’re gonna have to tell me what’s going on.”

“I love him, Tony,” Steve said softly, gaze fixed on his hands clasped loosely before him. “I’m in love with him.”

It was the first time he’d ever made the admission aloud, and the words sent a thrill through him.

“Are you?” Tony asked, blunt but not harsh. “Or are you in love with the kid you knew fifteen years ago?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Steve admitted, not offended by the question, since it was one that he’d been asking himself. “Until tonight.”

“Seriously? I mean, I knew _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ was a good movie, but I didn’t think it was really conducive to romantic revelations.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at his brother. He really thought that his impromptu movie night had been responsible for this?

“Tony, do you even know what time it is?”

Tony glanced at the digital clock in the corner of one of his holographic displays, and he frowned.

“Oh. You had another nightmare, didn’t you?”

Steve sighed and nodded.

“And now I’m sure,” he said. “About him. And I’m…I’m kind of freaking out here, Tony.”

He looked up after a moment and met his brother’s gaze. Despite the jokes, he could see that Tony was still taking the situation itself seriously, which he appreciated. The engineer could be a sarcastic ass, but he was always there for Steve when it mattered.

“So what are you gonna do about it?” he asked simply.

“I don’t know,” Steve groaned, letting his head fall into his hands.

“Well, in case it was unclear to you, he wants you too,” Tony said. “You should’ve seen his face when I told him you’re into dudes. It was like I’d told him that Christmas was going to be a weekly thing.”

“When were you two discussing my sexuality?” Steve demanded, momentarily distracted.

“At the cast party.”

“Well what did you say to him?”

“Relax, Steve,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “I told him the truth, and nothing but. I just told him that you weren’t straight. He asked me, by the way; I didn’t just volunteer the information.”

“Oh. Okay.” Steve wasn’t sure why he was surprised that Bucky had talked to Tony about this. He realized that the conversation must have occurred just after the run-in with Rumlow. With what Steve’s reaction had been like, no wonder Bucky had wanted clarification.

“And Bucky was happy, when you told him that?” he checked.

Tony rolled his eyes again. Steve hoped pettily that they would get stuck that way.

“The man looked like he was about to start floating. So naturally I gave him the shovel talk-”

“You what?” Steve spluttered.

“-And he assured me that his intentions were pure.”

Steve stared at his brother.

“You’re messing with me.”

“Only a little,” Tony sighed. “Steve, the man is crazy about you. The only reason he hasn’t made a move yet is because he’s afraid you don’t feel the same way, or that you’ll feel pressured into a celebrity relationship you’re not comfortable with.”

Steve frowned, recognizing the truth of Tony’s words. It was part of what had stopped him from acting on his feelings too.

“I just don’t know if I can do it, Tony,” he said honestly. “I’ve seen the way the public treats the other people he’s dated, and those were all women. He’s coming out tomorrow, and the kind of blowback he’s bound to get…what if he starts to resent me for it?”

Tony sighed and sat down beside Steve, their shoulders brushing.

“I’ve gotten to know James pretty well over the last few years,” he said. “He’s not the kind of person to let fame turn his head. He knows how to win over the public, but he doesn’t really let it get to him when he gets negative feedback.” Tony snorted. “Hell, you saw _The Convent_. Imagine the crap he got for that. It never bothered him.”

“You know full well that being in a crappy movie and coming out as bisexual are completely different.”

“Yeah, and parts of it are gonna be rough, Steve, I’m not trying to say otherwise. But I can tell you right now that you mean a hell of a lot more to James than public opinion does. So you don’t get to use him as an excuse.”

Steve bit back a sharp retort. Tony was right. He’d been projecting some of his fears on Bucky.

“You’re a stunning war hero with a heart of gold, Steve,” Tony went on. “The only people who won’t love you are assholes who aren’t worth your time.”

Steve was genuinely touched by Tony’s sincerity, but he knew it would only make his brother uncomfortable if he said that. So he just gave the man a smirk.

“I am talking to Tony Stark, right?” he checked. “Not some life-model decoy he made in a spare afternoon?”

Tony scowled and elbowed him, but his eyes were crinkled in amusement.

“Fame doesn’t have to suck, Steve,” he said. “It comes with its challenges, sure, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. And no matter what happens, people will get over it eventually. Those obnoxious thirteen-year-olds will grow up and the ones that replace them will be obsessed with someone new, and no one will give a damn who James Barnes dated. Well, James Barnes will, but that’s kind of the point.”

“But what if I mess this up?” Steve asked, quieter than ever as he aired his greatest fear. “What if I do something wrong and hurt him again? What if I lose him for good?”

“I know you, Steve. I know you won’t let that happen. And from the way James looks at you, there’s not a damn thing you could do to make him leave you.”

Steve said nothing, thinking that over. He loved Bucky, he knew that down to the very root of his being, and he wanted him, more than he’d ever wanted anyone in his life. That was simple, irrefutable. It was everything else that was complicated.

“So I guess you’ve got a decision to make,” Tony said.

Yes. Yes, he did.

“And I would be more than happy to install a vibrator in his fingers for you, if that’s how things go.”

So much for Tony taking this seriously. The engineer was going to develop a permanent bruise between his eyes if he didn’t get better at dodging things thrown at his face.


	10. Chapter 10

Although Bucky had fallen asleep safely on his side of the mattress, he woke up feeling like a teddy bear. Steve was practically on top of him, holding him close and using him as a pillow. It was an astonishingly nice way to wake up, but it filled Bucky with longing. He wanted to wake up with Steve every morning, not just the ones after either of them had a crippling nightmare.

He hadn’t lost hope of the possibility of that, but he knew it wasn’t where they were yet. So because he suspected that Steve would be embarrassed to wake up sprawled over his friend and actually drooling onto his shirt, Bucky very carefully disentangled himself from the other man without waking him up. He went to take a shower, taking care of his particularly stiff morning wood under the hot spray.

Steve was still asleep when he got out, which told Bucky just how much the nightmare had taken out of him. The actor was scheduled to visit a local children’s hospital later that morning, but his bodyguard still had some time to sleep. So he retreated to the kitchen, deciding that it was time to show Steve that he was not the only one who had learned to cook since they were kids.

Steve padded into the kitchen twenty minutes later, and Bucky smiled. His friend’s hair was sticking out in all directions like a fluffy golden halo, and it was the most endearing thing Bucky had ever seen.

“Are you cooking?” Steve asked him, returning the bright smile. There was something in his clear blue gaze that made everything in Bucky feel lighter.

“Yep. And you’ve returned to the land of the conscious just in time to enjoy the fruits of my labor.” Bucky slid the omelet that he had just finished onto a plate and set it at Steve’s place at the table. “It’s not pancakes, but it’s the best I could do with what you had in your pitifully stocked pantry.”

Steve didn’t even seem to notice the disparaging remark about his food supplies. He was just watching Bucky like he had never quite seen him before, and was trying to memorize every inch of him. Before the actor could ask him if there was something wrong, he seemed to shake himself back into the present. He just gave Bucky another smile and sat down at the table.

“It looks amazing, Buck,” he said, taking the fork that his friend handed to him. “I didn’t know you could do anything with eggs besides scramble them.”

“I couldn’t, but a guy in my unit had done a few years of culinary school before joining the military, and he took it upon himself to educate the rest of our sorry asses.”

“Well tell him thank you from me,” Steve said. “This is fantastic.”

He had taken his first bite of the eggs and was staring down at his plate with a level of surprise that really should have been insulting.

“I think you thanked him pretty well yourself when you and your team rescued him from a terrorist camp,” Bucky replied dryly. Trip had been one of the ones lucky enough to survive long enough for the Howling Commandos to save him.

“Oh.” Steve flushed a little, no doubt humble as ever. “Well in that case, I’m glad I could help.”

“Yeah. He actually got out of the army at the same time I did,” Bucky told him. “I haven’t seen him since then, but we’ve exchanged a few emails. I think he works in a restaurant in Manhattan now. Maybe we could go before we leave.”

“I’d like that. Have you gotten in touch with many of your army friends?”

Bucky could tell he was thinking about last night, about the former soldier’s admission that he had all but quarantined himself from the surviving members of his unit after their rescue.

“Not really,” Bucky admitted, working on an omelet for himself. “Even after I was in a better headspace, I couldn’t really bring myself to bother anybody. And after everything that happened, I think we all just kind of wanted to forget.”

“I get that,” Steve said.

Bucky didn’t doubt it. He didn’t ask for details though. He knew that most of Steve’s military service had to be classified.

“Trip reached out to me though,” he said, sitting down across from Steve with his own plate of eggs. “A couple months after I got out of the hospital. We’ve gotten in touch a few times over the last couple years. It would be nice to see him in person again. I’ll find out where he’s working, see if I can get us a reservation.”

“Sounds great. It’d be nice to meet him when there aren’t lives hanging in the balance.”

Bucky laughed. Steve smiled back at him, but then his face grew more serious.

“Thank you,” he said. “For last night. I…I needed that. You helped me in ways that no one else has been able to.”

“I’m glad,” Bucky told him earnestly. “But you really don’t have to thank me. It’s not like it was anything you wouldn’t do for me, that you didn’t already do for me. And I’m just so damn grateful that I get to be there for you again, you have no idea.”

He looked down, realizing that the last bit might have been too much. But then he felt a finger tapping on the back of his hand, and he looked up to see Steve staring at him with a soft expression.

“I think I might have some idea,” he said. “And everything you told me…I can’t imagine how hard that all must have been for you to share, but I’m really glad you opened up to me. And I want you to know that I only think more highly of you because of it.”

Bucky was saved from having to come up with a response that did not involve lunging across the table and kissing Steve by the sound of a shrill buzz coming from his pocket. Steve grimaced.

“It’s my text alert sound for Clint,” Bucky explained with a grin. “He’s probably reminding me that I have a phone interview in ten minutes. He doesn’t trust me to remember.”

“And how many phone interviews have you blown off in the past?”

“Uh…a lot.”

“Well, there you go.”

Bucky stuck his tongue out at Steve and pulled his phone from his pocket. Sure enough, the message was a reminder about the interview. Well, it was more of a threat, but Bucky was feeling charitable.

“I actually prefer phone interviews,” he told Steve. “Much less of a hassle.”

“Well yeah, but they deprive you of the excuse to wear eyeliner.”

Bucky kicked Steve under the table, even as he grinned.

“Hey, I look fantastic in eyeliner, and you know it. And don’t lie to me. I know you were impressed when Thor did your makeup.”

“The man is talented,” Steve admitted. “I’m excited to see how the pictures turned out.”

“Me too.” Bucky had been thrilled when Steve accepted Thor’s offer to do shots of both of them.

“Anyway, I’ll get the dishes,” Steve said, standing. “You can do your interview in the living room; it should be quiet.”

Bucky nodded and went to the living room. He cleared his throat a few times, making sure that his voice wouldn’t crack on him, and then just waited for the phone to ring as he listened to the comforting sounds of Steve puttering around in the kitchen. He used the time to look a little more carefully around the room, realizing that he had never really been in it without Steve there to distract him.

It was a fairly simple space, just the couch and two armchairs, clustered around a dark wooden coffee table and facing a modestly sized TV. One entire wall was lined with bookshelves, filled with everything from Tolstoy to James Patterson. And on the bottom shelf…Bucky knelt and looked closer, feeling a pang in his chest as he recognized his own comic books. He had always loved the colorful superhero stories, and Steve had bought the comics for him whenever he’d had a few dollars to spare. He’d had to keep his collection hidden from Pierce, who had burned most of the original one the same day he torched Steve’s sketchbooks.

The fact that Steve had kept these for all this time…well, Bucky had to clear his throat several more times before he could answer the phone when it rang.

He kept the interview firmly on the topic of _The Winter Soldier_ , because he _was_ on a press tour, for crying out loud. Promoting the movie was kind of his job.

By the time he hung up and walked back into the kitchen, Steve had gotten dressed, which was a damn shame, because he really did look good in just flannel pants and a thin t-shirt.

“How’d it go?” Steve asked, glancing up.

“Are you doing the crossword?” Bucky demanded, ignoring the question when he saw the paper spread out on the table in front of Steve.

“Yes, and you should know that Sam already gives me enough crap about it,” Steve sighed. “Apparently no one under the age of fifty has any business doing the crossword, but I-”

“16 down is euphoria,” Bucky interrupted, dropping into the chair beside Steve.

“-don’t care because I happen to enjoy – what?” Steve looked so surprised that Bucky had to bite back a laugh.

“16 down,” he said again, pointing. “A state of intense happiness or well-being. Euphoria. See? The U and I are already filled in.”

Steve gazed down at the paper for a moment, before filling in the rest of the word with his strong block letters. When he looked up again, he was smiling.

“People forget that war is usually boring,” Bucky explained. “But a crossword is a good way to pass the time.”

Steve just stared at him, and his eyes held the same mix of tender, disbelieving awe that Bucky felt when he looked at his friend.

“Yeah, that’s why I picked it up too,” Steve said before the silence could drag on. He shook his head. “Okay, well would you care to take a crack at 3 across? It’s driving me nuts.”

Bucky leaned over to look at the rest of the clues. They spent the next half hour finishing the puzzle together, getting into the occasional argument about whether or not a word existed. Part of Bucky could not believe how _surreal_ it all was, how easily Steve had slotted back into his life, how easy it was to just _be_ with him.

He couldn’t believe it when he looked up after Steve had triumphantly filled in the last word, and realized what time it was.

“Shit, we’ve got to be at the hospital in fifteen minutes,” he said, standing. “We should go.”

“Fear not, Mr. Barnes,” Steve said, and _god_ how different ‘Mr. Barnes’ sounded from him now than it had at the beginning. “Your highly skilled chauffer will get you there in time.”

“Yeah, so long as there’s no parallel parking involved.”

Bucky had to duck fast to dodge the pen that came flying toward his head.

*****

They did make it to the hospital in time, for which Bucky was grateful, because there was nothing quite like disappointing sick kids. There was also no parallel parking required, even though Steve insisted that he was perfectly capable of parking a damn car, thank you very much Buck. There were however a few photographers hovering outside the hospital entrance. One of them had been hired by Clint to follow Bucky inside and take some publicity photos, but the others were just after some candids. Bucky knew those guys wouldn’t be allowed inside the building, so he gave them a wave and a few charming smiles so that they didn’t feel like they had completely wasted their time.

Eventually they made it into the hospital itself, followed only by the preselected photographer, who would only be allowed to stay for the first half hour. Bucky wished that it could have been Thor, but he really only did studio shoots.

All the kids strong enough to leave their beds had been gathered in the main visitor room, which was full of knee-high plastic tables and chalkboard easels and those weird foam puzzle carpets that no one actually plays with but seem to crop up wherever there are children. The kids were all sitting, some more successfully than others, and they practically started vibrating with excitement when they saw Bucky. They managed to wait until the nurse officially introduced him, and then the more outgoing ones mobbed him. He laughed and knelt as the first wave hit him, hugging and high-fiving as many of them as he could reach and letting one particularly enterprising girl climb up onto his shoulders.

This was one of his favorite parts of being famous. Making kids happy just by showing up always felt like an incredible gift.

It had been Clint’s idea. Bucky had never even really considered the idea that kids might want to meet him, but he had jumped on the chance. He knew it had been for PR, but that hadn’t taken away from the fact that one boy had actually started crying with happiness when Bucky picked him up. Clint had raised an eyebrow when the actor went to him afterwards and told him to schedule as many hospital visits in the future as he could. What Bucky hadn’t told his agent was that all those sick kids had reminded him of another child who’d spent a lot of time in the hospital, a boy with wide blue eyes and golden hair and an immune system that hated him.

Bucky looked up at the grown Steve, who was watching the proceedings with an expression that appeared to be equal parts touched by the degree of cuteness he was witnessing, and utter consternation. Bucky grinned and introduced him to the kids, telling them that he was a real-life action hero like the kind that Bucky played in movies. He even had a special name and everything. Steve went bright red when the kids started calling him Captain America, but he seemed gratified as well, so Bucky didn’t feel too bad.

It turned out that Steve was utterly, hopelessly, adorably awkward around children. He seemed to have no idea how to talk to them or play with them. Some of the smaller or quieter kids just wanted to be held though, and he seemed perfectly content to do just that. He retreated to the side of the room under a pile of tiny humans. And if Bucky had thought that Steve could not get any more adorable, seeing him draped with children proved him very wrong. He would have been happy to just watch that for the rest of the day, but the more lively kids were still very much in want of attention.

Bucky spent a couple of hours with the kids, wrestling with the ones who were strong enough, making truly awful chalkboard art with others, showing off his metal arm to those who asked, signing casts and even one girl’s oxygen tank. He also made sure to talk to the shyer kids lingering on the periphery, not wanting them to feel left out because they were confined to wheelchairs or just weren’t as outgoing as the rest.

Eventually though, the children were chivied off back to their rooms for treatment and rest. Once they were gone, Bucky stood and strode over to where Steve was sitting in the corner. Evidently some of the kids had discovered that he could draw, because he was surrounded by easels and there was chalk all over his hands. Bucky helped his friend to his feet, laughing when the taller man stumbled and grimaced.

“My entire lower half is numb,” he explained, rubbing his thigh. “A little girl fell asleep on me, so moving sure wasn’t an option.”

“But just think how happy you made them,” Bucky said, clapping him on the shoulder and trying not to wish that he got to fall asleep on Steve whenever he wanted.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, a soft smile overtaking his face. “I can see why you do this, Buck.”

“Well, it’s sure not for the cafeteria food,” Bucky replied. “What do you say we go out and try to find some of that fine New York cuisine you promised me on the first day?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky turned to see a middle-aged couple standing together a few feet away, looking nervous. Probably parents of one of the patients.

“It’s James,” he told them, because it still felt weird to be called Mr. Barnes by people older than him. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Mary Storm, and this is my husband Franklin,” the woman said.

Bucky nodded and shook hands with them while he waited for her to get to the point.

“We were just wondering…” Mary cleared her throat, obviously fighting tears, and Bucky’s heart sank as he realized that their kid had to be in pretty bad shape. “Our son, Johnny, he’s-”

She broke off, and her husband wrapped an arm around her.

“He has bone cancer,” he said, his eyes only a little less red than his wife’s. “He’s really weak from all of the chemotherapy and he can’t leave his bed, but he was so looking forward to meeting you-”

“Where’s his room?” Bucky cut in before Franklin had to figure out how to ask. “I’d be happy to pay the little man a visit.”

“Thank you,” Franklin said thickly. “His room is this way. He’ll be so happy to see you. He, uh, he has a procedure next week, to…to take his arm. That’s where his cancer is, and the doctors are hoping he’ll go into remission after, but…”

“He’s scared,” Mary cut in. “But ever since we told him what was going to happen, he’s just been watching your movies. He’d always liked you before, and now he says that if James Barnes can get by with just one arm, then so can he.”

Bucky could not even begin to try to come up with a response to that as he followed the parents down the hall. He couldn’t believe that he was such an inspiration to this kid, to anybody. He had spent so much time feeling like he was about to fall apart that he’d failed to appreciate the miracle it was that he’d held himself together.

He felt a little nervous as he stepped into the dim hospital room, not wanting to mess this up. His chest tightened when he saw the kid on the bed, a boy who looked so much like Steve had at that age, it was a little scary and a lot heart wrenching. Johnny turned his head to look at the visitors, his movements sluggish, and his eyes widened comically when he recognized Bucky.

“Oh my god!” he gasped, trying to sit up. His father hurried to elevate his bed so that he didn’t have to work so hard. “I thought you were just gonna do the group visit!”

“Well, I heard the bravest kid in Manhattan was here, so how could I pass up the opportunity to meet him?” Bucky asked, walking over to the bed.

“Good point,” the kid said with a smile that was a little too wobbly with genuine emotion to be as cocky as he had probably intended.

“Self-confidence, that’s what I like to see,” Bucky told him, returning the smile. He extended his left hand, clenched into a fist, so that Johnny could bump his knuckles against it.

Johnny stared almost reverently at the metal. Bucky held his arm closer so that the kid could get a better look. He ran his fingers over it shyly, then looked up at Bucky, biting his lip.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Not even a little,” Bucky assured him.

Johnny nodded, then looked hesitant again.

“I think you’re awesome,” he said in a rush. “But I don’t want to lose my arm.”

“I don’t blame you,” Bucky told him gently. “I didn’t want to lose mine either. But you know what I realized? Losing a limb doesn’t make you weak, Johnny. It makes you strong. You’ll have to work hard, yeah, but you’ll still be able to do whatever you set your mind to. And when people see you, they’ll know how strong and brave you are, because they’ll know how much you’ve overcome.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And Johnny Storm? Totally a superhero name.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely. You’ll be so much cooler than anyone I’ve ever played.”

Johnny’s face lit up. Bucky studiously ignored the sniffling sounds from behind him that he knew were coming from the kid’s mother.

The actor stayed in Johnny’s room for almost an hour, just chatting with him. They moved away from the subject of amputation pretty quickly, because who wanted to linger on that? Johnny turned out to be a really bright kid. Once he got over his initial star-struck shyness, his spunky attitude came out, making Bucky laugh.

When he noticed that Johnny was fighting hard to stay awake though, he knew it was time to leave. He did promise to check up on Johnny later, even if it was just through Skype or something like that. He hoped he’d get the chance to visit in person though. The kid had managed to charm his way into Bucky’s heart.

He waved off Franklin’s thanks as the older man followed him and Steve out of the room.

“You’ve got an awesome kid,” Bucky told him. “I’m just glad I could make him happy. I really do want to hear how he’s doing later. Here.” He gave the man his card, the one with Clint’s number. “That’ll get you to my agent. I’ll let him know to expect your call.”

“I…” Franklin stared down at the card, looking overwhelmed. Bucky clapped him gently on the shoulder.

“It’ll be tough for him,” he said quietly. “There’s no getting around that. But he’s gonna be all right. I can tell.”

Franklin swallowed hard and nodded, then reached out to shake Bucky’s hand again.

“Thank you,” he said. “I must say, I had my…well. I’m glad that my son picked you as his idol. And there’s not a lot of people I would say that to.”

He gave Bucky a final nod, before retreating back into Johnny’s room. Relief and something bigger filled Bucky, and he let out a breath.

“Well that’s something I don’t hear very often,” he told Steve. “I forget, sometimes, what it’s like with kids.”

“You were great with him, Buck,” Steve said. “With all of them. You…”

He trailed off, shaking his head. He just held Bucky’s gaze, and something in it sent a flush sweeping through his entire body.

“So about that lunch I was suggesting,” he said to cover up how flustered he got just from Steve _looking_ at him.

“Actually…” Steve bit his lip, looking nervous. “Do you mind if we just go back to the Tower instead?”

Bucky blinked, a little surprised. Then he started to get nervous himself. It couldn’t be a good sign that Steve was unwilling to go out to lunch with him again. Had he done something wrong last time?

“Okay,” he agreed hesitantly.

Steve’s answering smile was a little too tight to be reassuring. The bodyguard turned on his heel and led Bucky out of the hospital and into the parking garage in silence. Bucky was running over the last few hours in his mind, trying to figure out what he had done that might have made Steve revert to the distant professional who would barely even look at him except to check that he was wearing his seatbelt.

Bucky’s stomach was in knots by the time they boarded the elevator that would take them to Steve’s floor. The silence between them had not been broken since the hospital, and Bucky was pretty sure it was about to kill him. So when the door to Steve’s apartment began to swing shut behind them, he finally turned to his friend, ready to demand answers.

He never got the chance.

Because when he turned Steve was _right there_ , taking Bucky’s face in his hands and kissing him on the lips.

Bucky froze, his brain sputtering to a halt and doing a clumsy 180. Realizing that he was being _kissed_ by _Steve Rogers_ , he let out a very undignified noise and looped his arms around Steve’s neck. He threw himself into the kiss with wild abandon, fire lancing through him when Steve just pulled him closer.

The vast majority of his brain was pretty much just going _holy shit holy shit holy shit_ , but the tiny part that could actually believe this was really happening was jumping up and down with delight. That part grew faster and faster, and soon Bucky was smiling too hard to keep kissing Steve, which was just as well because they were both pretty breathless by that point.

“Sorry,” Steve gasped, resting his forehead against Bucky’s. “I promised myself I’d wait until the end of the day to do that, but you…you just…”

“I am really, _really_ not sorry you couldn’t keep your promise,” Bucky told him, brain still trying to catch up. “Why did you even _make_ that promise? _When_ did you make that promise?”

“I didn’t want to distract you from your job.”

It was such a _Steve_ thing to say. Bucky let out a giddy laugh and kissed him again, a fresh jolt of happiness shooting through him when Steve kissed him back just as eagerly. Bucky broke away sooner this time though, wanting to hear the answer to the second part of his question.

“Last night,” Steve admitted. “But I didn’t want to wake you up again.”

Bucky raised an incredulous eyebrow at him.

“I’m pretty sure I would have been okay with it,” he said dryly.

“So there’s a chance I was being a bit of an idiot,” Steve allowed with a bashful grin. “But apparently that’s common for people who are in love.”

Bucky stopped breathing. He stared at Steve, who looked a little sheepish but was staring right back at him with a tenderness that turned his knees to jello.

“You-?” he gasped, needing to know, needing to hear the words again.

Steve leaned forward until their foreheads were touching again. His earnest gaze was full of an intensity that had Bucky’s heart doing somersaults.

“I love you, Bucky,” he said solemnly. “I’ve loved you since we were kids, and I love you even more now.”

And there it was, everything Bucky had ever wanted, everything he had thought for so long he could never have. As that began to sink in, joy and something like relief swept through the deepest corners of his heart, brightening everything within him. He tugged Steve into another crushing kiss, but pulled away again after just a moment.

“Wait, are you sure?” he checked, arms still around Steve’s neck.

Steve laughed gently.

“Of course I’m sure. I don’t even remember what it was like _not_ loving you.”

“No, I meant are you sure about dating me? Because I love you too, Steve, and if we do this, and then you decide it’s too much for you…”

Bucky winced at the idea of what it would feel like the have Steve walk away after this.

“Hey.” Steve pressed a light kiss to the end of his nose, bringing back his smile. “I’m sure about that, too. I’m sorry it took me so long to see past all of that. But I’ve got no illusions about what I’m getting myself into, and I’m ready. You’re worth it.”

Bucky bit his lip and stared at Steve searchingly. When he could detect nothing but sincere certainty and love in his friend’s eyes, he felt his whole face split into an awed smile. His heart felt like it was too big for his chest.

Suddenly even the smallest distance between them was unacceptable, so Bucky pulled Steve close and kissed him again. Steve went more than willingly, lips parting to let him in. It was amazing, and not just because the other man was a good kisser, which he was, but because it was _Steve_ , Steve’s mouth moving against his, Steve’s hands sliding up to tangle in his hair, Steve’s body pressed to every inch of his.

Bucky lost track of time as he basked in the wonder of it all. He only came back to himself when he felt Steve pause and falter, pulling back slightly to look at him. Bucky figured out what had distracted him and he flushed, shifting back so that the bulge in his jeans was no longer pressed against Steve’s thigh.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to pressure you or anything. We can take this as slow as you w-”

He broke off with an involuntary gasp as Steve very deliberately shifted against him, and Bucky realized with a heady rush that he wasn’t the only one who was hard.

“Been wanting this half my life, Buck,” Steve murmured, his eyes dark with what was unquestionably lust. “I’m getting a little tired of slow. You?”

Bucky could only nod helplessly and throw himself into the kiss with more urgency than before. He slid his hands down Steve’s body, warm muscle rippling under his touch. He felt Steve tugging insistently on his shirt, and he pulled back just far enough for him to remove the fabric between them. Bucky wanted to feel as much of Steve’s skin against his own as possible, and soon the other man’s t-shirt was on the floor as well. Bucky had seen Steve bare-chested the night before, but it was different now, more. He was so damn beautiful that Bucky just found himself staring for a moment, until Steve smirked at him, lips flushed and glistening.

“You just gonna stand there all day, Barnes?” he challenged. “Make me get started by myself?”

He went to undo his belt buckle, but Bucky grabbed him by the wrists and pushed him back until he was pressed against the wall. Steve looked momentarily surprised, but then his pupils went even wider, and he licked his lips.

“I don’t think so,” Bucky growled, mouthing hungrily down Steve’s neck, along the curve of his shoulder, learning his taste to go along with the scent that he had loved for so long.

“Good,” Steve gasped, the teasing tone gone, replaced with need.

Bucky crowded in closer to him, reveling in the welcoming heat of his body. He rolled his hips, the friction sending pleasure tingling up his spine. The sound Steve made in response was beautiful, so Bucky did it again. He was suddenly desperate to know what other sounds Steve would make as he came apart.

He fumbled at Steve’s waist, undoing his belt and zipper and pushing the pants out of the way to be kicked off impatiently. He left a trail of kisses down Steve’s chest, lingering for a moment at the scar over his heart, before kneeling. He tugged Steve’s boxers down, getting rid of the last fabric barrier. Bucky sucked in a short breath, because of course this part of Steve was as gorgeous as the rest of him.

He slid his hands up Steve’s thighs to his waist, holding him in place. He looked up to meet Steve’s gaze, and was greeted with wide eyes, set in a face flushed with lust. The look he gave Bucky was full of nothing but want, and it was all the invitation Bucky needed. He dipped his head forward and took Steve into his mouth, closing his eyes at the sound of the breathy moan that this elicited.

He felt Steve’s hands come down to tangle in his hair, guiding him into a rhythm. Though Bucky was not exactly proud of the extent of his sexual history, he was grateful for the experience that it had provided him. He wanted to make this good for Steve. Judging by the sounds his partner was making, he was succeeding.

“Bucky, wait,” Steve gasped eventually, his hands suddenly pushing Bucky away instead of tugging him closer.

Bucky pulled away at once and looked up at him in concern.

“What is it?”

“I just – I want…want to come with you inside me,” Steve breathed, eyes wide and pleading.

Bucky thought his brain was going to short-circuit. Did Steve really think he needed to _beg_ for that?

He shot to his feet and surged toward Steve, trapping his mouth in a brief, hungry kiss.

“Fuck yes,” he breathed against Steve’s lips, and then he was tugging the man down the mercifully short hall to the master bedroom.

He deposited Steve on the bed and then hurried to shuck his jeans and briefs as fast as humanly possible. He took a moment to memorize the image of Steve, naked and flushed with desire, splayed out and waiting and looking at Bucky like he was the center of the very universe.

And then Bucky was climbing onto the bed with him, slotting himself into the space between Steve’s legs. He bent forward and lowered his mouth to Steve’s chest, exploring with his tongue. Steve gasped and writhed under his touch.

“Bucky, please,” he groaned, and Bucky never had been able to say no to Steve, especially when he sounded like _that_.

“Have you got-”

“Nightstand drawer.”

Bucky sat up and leaned over Steve’s prone form to pull open the drawer in question. He raised an eyebrow at its contents.

“That’s very…well-stocked,” he remarked.

“Tony,” Steve muttered, sounding the unique mix of disgruntled, exasperated, and amused that only Tony Stark could invoke in a person. “No matter how many times I take all that stuff out, it’s always there when I come back.”

Bucky laughed and snagged a condom and a packet of lube from the drawer, ignoring some of the more…exotic contents.

“How thoughtful,” he said, coating the fingers of his right hand with lube. “There’s definitely some stuff in there that I’d be interested in trying.”

“Yeah, next time,” Steve said impatiently. “Come _on_ , Buck.”

Bucky tried not to smile too hard at the idea of next time, the casual promise of more time spent with Steve, maybe a lifetime.

He worked Steve open carefully, not wanting any part of this to hurt. Apparently it was doing just the opposite, and the sounds that Steve was making went straight to Bucky’s cock, until he was so hard he ached.

“Now, Bucky, come on,” Steve begged eventually.

Bucky fumbled in his haste to get the condom on, eventually just using his left hand because his right was shaking slightly with twenty years worth of pent up passion. Once he was ready, he looked up at Steve’s face again, breath catching in his throat when he saw the expression there. If he had been harboring any residual doubts about how Steve felt about him, that look vaporized them in an instant.

Bucky couldn’t resist leaning forward to kiss Steve again, hoping that it communicated at least some of what he was feeling because he certainly wasn’t capable of putting it into words. He was met with equal passion, and knew that the gist of his message had gotten across.

Satisfied, he broke off the kiss and repositioned himself with Steve.

“You ready?” he checked, earning himself an impatient roll of the eyes.

“Before I’m ninety would be nice, Buck.”

Bucky grinned, surprised and amused by Steve’s impatience. It made him want to learn more about this part of Steve, what he liked and which parts of his personality emerged.

_Next time_ , Bucky promised himself, smile widening.

He placed his hands on the soft skin of Steve’s hips and began to push himself inside. They both groaned, and Bucky tightened his grip, forcing himself to go slowly, carefully.

“Fuck,” Steve gasped, his back arching slightly. “Fuck, Bucky, that’s perfect.”

Bucky could not help but agree. Steve felt incredible around him, hot and tight. Once he was all the way in, he paused, letting Steve adjust. He felt Steve’s hands sliding up his legs and over his ass, tracing patterns on his ribs and chest with warm, gentle fingers.

“Move,” he ordered after a moment.

Bucky was happy to oblige, and soon he found a perfect rhythm again as Steve urged him on in quiet moans. Bucky lost himself in the pleasure of it, the feeling of filling up Steve, the exquisite slide of sweat-slicked skin, the sounds of Steve coming undone beneath him. This was what he had been looking for, what he had never been able to find no matter how many partners he had been with. This was what it meant to be with someone he loved, and who loved him in return.

“Bucky,” Steve moaned, reaching for himself.

Bucky batted his hands away and took Steve carefully in his metal hand, giving him a few experimental strokes. Steve let out a breathy whine and flung his head back, clearly having no problem with the artificial hand. Bucky increased the speed and pressure, and soon Steve was crying out.

“Shit, Bucky, I’m gonna-”

He went silent as he came, tightening impossibly. It was enough to send Bucky over the edge too, and his vision whited out around the edges as his own orgasm crashed over him in waves of pleasure that were almost painfully strong.

He pulled carefully out as he came down, drinking in the way Steve watched him, looking blissed out and awed. He let himself fall against Steve’s sticky chest, their legs tangling together. He practically purred with contentment when strong arms wrapped around him, holding him in place. He grinned as Steve pressed slow, lazy kisses to the sensitive skin below his ear.

“I hope that was as good for you as it was for me,” Bucky said. “Because I’d really like to get a chance at that next time you promised me.”

“Bucky, there will be as many next times as you can handle,” Steve vowed in a murmur.

Bucky closed his eyes, letting that sink in. Then he tilted his head to kiss Steve again, slow and languid and with no expectation of more, but just because he could. He broke away eventually and slid his hand up to cup Steve’s face, just staring at him for a moment.

“I love you,” he said. He knew he’d said it before, but it had been in the middle of making some other point, and he needed to say it properly.

The smile Steve gave him was radiant, breathtaking.

“I love you too, Buck,” he said, pressing a tender kiss to Bucky’s temple. “Always.”

Bucky wondered what he had done in his past life to deserve this. It must have been something pretty spectacular.


	11. Chapter 11

Neither of them felt like moving for a long time, but Steve was finally the one to insist on showers for both of them. Bucky just grunted and snuggled closer to him, reveling in the fact that he could, which earned himself an indulgent chuckle and a quick kiss. But they really did need to shower, and Bucky warmed to the idea considerably when Steve made it clear that it was going to be a group activity.

There was nothing else on Bucky’s agenda for the day, and neither of them wanted to go back out yet, so once they were both clean and dry they settled on the couch in the living room. Bucky curled up against Steve, tucking his head under the other man’s chin. Gentle fingers began to tease through his damp hair, scratching his scalp lightly. Bucky sighed happily and let his eyes drift shut, listening to the slow but vital pounding of Steve’s heart. He thought he would have been content to sit like that forever, but there was something he wanted to know.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked. He hadn’t wanted to make it sound like an accusation, but he still felt Steve’s chest rise and fall with a heavy sigh, the breath whistling under his ear.

“I don’t know if that’s the right phrase,” Steve said, sounding contrite. “I just…I’ve had feelings for you for so long…I got used to knowing that you and I could never have anything, because I wasn’t a part of your life anymore. And then I started working for you, and everything came out, and that alone was more than I knew what to do with. I was so worried about how much everything had changed and how I was supposed to fit into this whole life that you’ve built for yourself and somehow I got so wrapped up in worrying about all that, that I kind of lost sight of what it was all _for_. But then last night I realized, or remembered really, how much I _love_ you, and it shouldn’t have blindsided me like it did, but it was so much more, and different, and I just…”

Steve’s chest rumbled with a nervous laugh. Bucky took a deep breath as he let that sink in, his throat feeling tight. Steve’s love just felt like such a miracle, one that he still had a little trouble believing he deserved. He swallowed hard and pressed a soft kiss to Steve’s collarbone, right at the edge of his t-shirt. He didn’t say anything though, because he knew the other man wasn’t done.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Steve admitted with another sigh, his hand dropping from Bucky's hair to his shoulders, holding him tight. “I knew something had to change, and I just wasn’t sure if I was ready for what that meant. I was scared, because you matter so much to me, Buck, and all I could think about were all of the ways this could go wrong. I mean you’re a celebrity, and I’ve spent half my life trying to avoid the spotlight. And then what if people didn’t like me, and they gave you crap for it? Not to mention the fact that I’m your bodyguard, and maintaining a professional distance is part of my job.”

Bucky frowned, wanting to interrupt, but Steve was on a roll now.

“But that just made me more upset, because professional distance went out the window after that first interview, and it died a fiery death to the tune of my mother’s favorite record last night, but I couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to do my job anymore, because my job is keeping you safe, and the thought of failing at that again…”

Bucky flinched at the use of the word ‘again.’ If Steve really thought he’d ever failed Bucky in the first place…

“I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to my bed alone, couldn’t stand letting go of you after everything we talked about, but I couldn’t sleep either.” Steve’s tone took on a wry sheepishness. “It took about an hour of me just lying awake thinking way too hard before I actually resorted to going to see Tony. He helped me pull my head out of my ass. And I realized that I was getting caught up in all the stupid stuff that didn’t matter, when I was in love with my best friend and not doing anything about it. And I guess you know what happened next.”

Bucky pulled away from Steve just enough to be able to look at him. There was an apology in his eyes, but there was no uncertainty, no hesitation, and that was all that mattered. Bucky cupped his face gently and kissed him.

“I’m glad you did something about it,” he said with a smile. “And I get it, Steve. But I want you to know that you’ll always come before the job or the life for me. Always. I don’t care what the masses say about me. And you don’t have to use the excuse of being my bodyguard to be with me. I definitely want you around for more than your truly exquisite muscles and questionable driving skills.”

The glare that Steve gave him lacked any trace of heat, and there was relief in the set of his shoulders.

“My driving skills are phenomenal,” he sniffed. “It’s my parking skills that leave something to be desired.”

Bucky smiled and settled back against Steve’s chest, pressing his ear to the warm skin over his heart. He didn’t think that he would ever get tired of listening to that steady beat, lost to him for so long.

“I’m gonna try to stay on as your bodyguard though,” Steve told him. “If it turns out to be a problem later, we can figure that out.”

Bucky hummed in assent and nodded, but he hoped it never came to that. He didn’t think anyone could ever make him feel as safe as Steve did, and there was certainly no one else he’d rather spend the majority of his time with.

There was still the matter of the public though. Steve had said that he was okay with a celebrity relationship, but would he want to be kept a secret, like he was with Tony? Bucky would do that for him, but it wasn’t exactly an appealing prospect. He didn’t want to feel like Steve was something he had to hide.

Before he could ask, there was a loud ding from the direction of the door, and he sat up with a frown.

“You have a doorbell?” he asked incredulously.

“No, that was my phone,” Steve said, standing. “It’s in my other pants.”

That was when Bucky realized that their clothes were still strewn all over the floor. He couldn’t help smiling at the evidence of their fevered rush to be together. The strangled noise that Steve let out upon checking his phone distracted him from that line of thinking.

“What is it?” he asked, getting up as well.

“It’s…” Steve shook his head, his entire face bright red and his expression an interesting mix of disbelieving incredulity, embarrassment, and grudging amusement.

“Are more teenage girls drooling over your attractiveness?” Bucky asked, smirking.

“They, uh, took it a step farther than that,” Steve said, shaking his head again.

Bucky frowned in confusion, and Steve held the phone out to him. He glanced down at the screen and felt his jaw drop. It wasn’t a tumblr post this time. Oh, no. It was a _fanfic_.

 _Lost and Found_ , the title read. And in the relationship tag: “Grant”/James Barnes. The rating was explicit.

Bucky felt his own cheeks flame. He knew that fan fiction was out there, of course, but it was usually just about his characters. And when it was supposed to be about him, he’d never been paired with someone he’d actually had any interest in.

“I…” Bucky found himself at as much a loss for words as Steve had been. He winced. God, Steve had only just worked up the resolve to start dating a celebrity, and then he got hit with _this_?

“Steve, I’m so sorry,” he said, looking up. “I had no idea-”

“It’s all right,” Steve said, shaking his head yet again. “I mean, it’s surreal as hell, but it’s fine.”

And then he burst into laughter, and Bucky could not help joining in after a moment.

“Whoever wrote this must have figured it out before we did,” Steve said, wiping at his eyes. “That was posted this morning.”

Bucky was the one shaking his head this time. Well, at least this meant that some of his fans would be supportive.

“Was this Natasha again?” he asked, handing the phone back to Steve, who nodded. “Should I be worried about how she even found that?”

Steve chuckled, his expression fond.

“Nah. She’s a spy; she just knows things.”

“Yeah? Think she knows about us?”

Bucky meant it as a joke, but Steve actually looked thoughtful. And then he looked suspicious.

“I think she set me up,” he said slowly. “She’s the one who pushed me toward SHIELD, and she’s connected with Director Fury. I could totally see her getting him to assign me to you.”

“Well in that case, I feel like I should send her a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine or something,” said Bucky.

Steve grinned wryly.

“Yeah, if she’s behind this, she’s going to be almost as insufferable as Tony’s bound to be. Well, that’s not true. She’s quieter about the gloating, but more likely to remember that I owe her. I’m probably going to be fixing her sinks for the rest of my life.”

“Seems fair,” Bucky said, dropping back onto the couch. “And I can’t believe you went to Tony Stark for relationship advice.”

“Yeah, I was pretty desperate,” Steve admitted, sitting beside Bucky. “Although to be fair, he’s been dating Pepper for three months and she hasn’t tried to kill him yet, so he’s making progress.”

“Fair point,” Bucky allowed. He glanced at Steve’s pocket, thoughts circling back to that fanfic. “You’re sure it doesn’t bother you?”

“Well I don’t plan on _reading_ it,” Steve said, understanding what he meant. “And it weirds me out a little that someone bothered to write an erotic story about us, especially without even knowing who I am, but it really is fine. I just plan on trying my best not to think about it.”

He placed a warm hand on Bucky’s knee and squeezed it, meeting his eyes earnestly.

“I’m not gonna get scared off, Buck,” he promised. “Especially not by something like that. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

“Thank god,” Bucky said, putting his human hand to the back of Steve’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss.

Steve was smiling when they broke apart, a teasing light in his eyes.

“I still can’t believe that Grant is the best alias you could come up with,” he said. “Does it even count as an alias if it’s part of my actual name?”

Bucky rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out.

“Well I thought about calling you Ferris,” he confided, laughing when Steve whacked him on the arm.

“Scar was a pretty good name for Pierce though,” Steve said, his face darkening.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed. “What are we gonna do about that, Steve? We can be as discreet as we want, but someone’s gonna be tenacious enough to figure it out. Now that they know I was in the foster system, they’ll dig up old pictures or school records or something, and the media will spontaneously combust.”

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said quietly. “Pierce was the director of the damned CIA. Those people are the best of the best at hiding the truth. They don’t want the knowledge out there that he was an abusive bastard, especially with how famous you’ve gotten. They know what that would do to the agency. Pierce was probably wiped from both our histories the day he was killed. And I doubt there are that many pictures of us with him. He didn’t take us so that he could flaunt us for publicity, and it’s not like he went to any school events for us.”

Well that much was true. Pierce had never talked about his foster children publicly or dragged them to a press conference or photo op. No, he’d kept them for his own, more twisted reasons.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Bucky said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Nice to think that the government would go to the trouble of covering up the abuse, when they couldn’t be bothered to stop it from happening in the first place.”

Steve said nothing to that, but he intertwined his fingers with Bucky’s metal ones and leaned into his side, giving him a tender kiss on the cheek. The warmth of his presence was a soothing balm to the bitterness. The two of them had been seriously fucked over, yeah, but they had still gotten here in the end.

They sat in silence for a long moment, before Bucky’s stomach growled loudly, making them both jump. It broke the solemn mood, and they laughed.

“Sorry,” Bucky said, realizing how hungry he was. “Those omelets were a long time ago.”

“Yeah, we never did get a chance to eat, did we?” Steve asked sheepishly. “We were going to find something after the hospital.”

“I’m really okay with how the post-hospital events went, in the long run,” Bucky said, grinning at Steve, who rolled his eyes. “But I would very much like to eat now.”

“Me too. You mentioned your old army buddy’s restaurant. Do you think we could try that?”

Bucky agreed, and set about finding out where Trip had ended up after five years.

*****

It turned out that Bucky’s old friend worked in a restaurant twenty minutes from Stark Tower. They didn’t take reservations, but since it was 2:30 in the afternoon, Steve didn’t think they would have too much competition for a table.

Bucky sat in the passenger seat for the drive, like he always did, and Steve couldn’t help stealing glances at him every now and again. Bucky caught him at it when they were stopped at a red light.

“I’m not gonna disappear while you’re not looking, punk,” he said, but his cheeky smile was tinged with understanding.

Today had been like something out of a dream, and Steve suspected that both of them were just the smallest bit afraid that they would wake up.

“Can’t a man stare at his stupidly attractive boyfriend?” Steve asked with feigned defensiveness.

Bucky blinked and bit his lip, looking pleased.

“I feel like I should come up with a witty response to that, but my wits stopped working when you called me your boyfriend.”

“If it felt as good to hear as it did to say, I can understand why,” Steve replied, giving Bucky a bashful smile.

Because the word boyfriend meant something real. It meant a relationship that they were both committed to. It meant that Steve had a claim to Bucky that no one else did, celebrity or no.

Bucky smiled back, and Steve just stared at him until the impatient honking from behind him reminded him that he was still behind the wheel. He tried to shake himself back into focus. The last thing he needed was to give Bucky more fodder to rib him about his driving skills. Besides, he had vowed to himself that he would remain a professional when he needed to.

His concentration was not helped any when Bucky started toying with the hairs at the back of his neck, the cool metal of his hand sending shivers down Steve’s spine, but he got them to the restaurant in one piece.

“You’re a menace,” he informed Bucky as he opened the car door for him.

“What, a man’s not allowed to play with his stupidly attractive boyfriend’s hair?” Bucky asked.

Steve wanted to kiss that coy smirk off his face, but they were in public, so he settled for raising his eyebrow.

“Oh, so there’s the witty response,” he said. “Only took you ten minutes to come up with it.”

Steve got his first look at what Bucky’s metal hand looked like when it was flipping someone off. It sent him into a very unprofessional fit of giggles, and he and Bucky were both still smiling when they walked into the restaurant. The hostess clearly recognized the actor, but she made no comment, which was a promising sign. She also led them to a quiet corner booth without even being asked.

“Can you tip hostesses?” Bucky asked as she left, echoing Steve’s thoughts.

“I don’t know, but she deserves one.” Steve glanced around the restaurant. It was nice, though not as fancy as some of the ones that Tony had dragged him to over the years. He thought he had a chance of actually being able to pronounce everything on the menu.

The waiter must have been warned about Bucky, because he didn’t so much as blink in surprise as he approached their table and took their drink orders. Bucky stopped him before he could return to the kitchen and asked if Antoine Triplett was working that day. The waiter said he would send him out.

“I thought you said your friend’s name was Trip,” Steve said as the other man left.

“It is,” Bucky replied, raising his eyebrows. “That’s what he went by, anyway. It comes from Triplett. Does it matter?”

“Not really, it’s just that his cousin always referred to him as Antoine, so I didn’t put it together.”

“His cousin?”

“Gabe Jones. One of the Howling Commandos.”

Bucky fixed Steve with an incredulous look.

“Are you kidding me?” he demanded.

“Nope.”

Steve remembered how upset Gabe had been when they got news of Antoine’s capture. Needless to say, the rescue mission had been one of the best motivated in Howling Commandos history.

“You know, at this point I think the universe has just been fucking with us,” Bucky said flatly.

Steve just chuckled and shook his head.

“Maybe the universe was just fed up with our idiocy and was trying to bring us together,” he suggested.

“The universe could have chosen better methods.”

Steve couldn’t argue with him there.

“Well I’ll be damned. And here I was thinking that James Barnes had developed better taste.”

Steve and Bucky both looked up to see a young man in kitchen whites standing beside their table, smiling. Steve recognized him immediately. While he had admittedly been distracted the day they met, he would never forget the look on Gabe’s face when they had found this man alive and relatively unhurt in his cell at the terrorist camp. There had been tears involved, and from people besides just the reunited cousins. Trip had been glued to Gabe’s side for the remainder of the mission. Preoccupied as he had been with finding and then taking care of Bucky, Steve hadn’t really gotten the chance to talk to him.

“You really so desperate for company that you looked up the new guy who never figured out how to cover his right side?”

Bucky grinned, and Steve could tell how pleased he was that his old friend seemed to be treating him normally.

“Well, you always swore that you were a better cook than you were a fighter, so I thought I’d come see if you could put your money where your mouth is,” he said, standing to shake Trip’s hand.

The other man laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Steve stood as well, feeling rude, and Trip’s gaze fell on him. He frowned for a moment, and then his eyes widened.

“Captain Rogers?” he gasped.

It was Steve’s turn to smile and stick out his hand.

“It’s actually Agent Rogers now, technically,” he said. “But Steve will do just fine.”

“Wow. You– wow.” Trip just stared for a moment, and then seemed to realize that Steve was still waiting for a handshake. “Oh, yeah.”

They shook hands as Bucky started cracking up.

“I’m sure Steve would be happy to give you an autograph, Trip,” the actor said. “I can take a picture of the two of you, if you want.”

Trip glared at him and swatted him on the arm.

“Hey, it’s not my fault that Captain America is cooler than you,” he said.

“Whatever stories Gabe told you were probably exaggerated,” Steve told him, although he couldn’t help giving Bucky a smug grin.

“Didn’t need him to tell me about the time you stormed a terrorist camp to save a squad of captive soldiers,” Trip said, eyebrow raised.

“Well, I can’t take all the credit for that. I think your cousin would’ve stolen a helicopter and gone after you himself if we hadn’t been given the mission.”

Trip smiled warmly at that. Bucky asked him to sit with them and he agreed, though he said that he could only stay for a minutes.

“Some of us actually have bosses to report to, after all,” he said with a good-natured nudge of Bucky’s arm.

“You should go into acting,” Bucky told him. “You get wildly overpaid, and the bodyguards are knockouts. In every sense of the word.”

“Oh god,” Steve groaned with an exaggerated wince. “I’m not paid enough to put up with bad puns.”

“You’re his bodyguard?” Trip asked him. “Man, I’m sorry.”

Steve laughed as Bucky dug an elbow into his friend’s ribs. At least it wasn’t the metal one.

“I’ll have you know that I’m an absolute joy to guard,” the actor said. “Isn’t that right, Steve?”

“I can honestly say that he’s the best client I’ve ever had,” Steve told Trip, his lips twitching. The chef eyed him suspiciously.

“He’s the only client you’ve ever had, isn’t he?” he guessed.

“Irrelevant,” Bucky declared before Steve could answer. “I would be the best even if I were his hundredth client.”

“Things did take a definite turn for the better when I found out that he could cook,” Steve allowed. “I hear I have you to thank for that, Trip.”

“Well I couldn’t very well leave his culinary skills in the state they were when I met him. I damn near started crying when I saw the man try to make grilled cheese. I mean, how the hell do you fuck up grilled cheese so badly that one half is a blackened crisp and the other half is stuck to the ceiling?”

Steve snorted, and Bucky glowered at him.

“But speaking of cooking, I should really get back to work,” Trip went on. “Don’t bother with the menus, I’ll just have Jemma send out the best stuff. My shift ends at four if you guys want to hang around. I’ll even let you buy me a drink, Barnes.”

“You’re on,” Bucky told him as he slid out of the booth.

“He seems like a good guy,” Steve remarked as they watched Trip retreat to the kitchen.

“Yeah. It’s good to see him again. I kinda wish I hadn’t put it off so long.”

“If you weren’t ready, you weren’t ready,” Steve said gently. “And he certainly doesn’t seem to be holding it against you.”

“Yeah, because he was too busy hero worshipping you,” Bucky said, but there was an edge to his amused smile. “He knew your name. No one I asked knew your name, but he did. If I’d just asked him back then…”

Steve swallowed hard, guilt rising to the surface again. He should have stayed with Bucky. He should have sucked it up and found the courage to face the possibility of Bucky’s rejection. But he knew there was no point in expressing these thoughts.

“Hey,” he said, reaching across the table to take Bucky’s hand. “We agreed on this, remember? Looking forward, not back.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed. He looked at his hand in Steve’s, and a more genuine smile overtook his face. “I guess this is technically our first date, huh?”

“I think we’ve had a lot of first dates,” Steve said wryly. “This is just the first one we both know about.”

“Mm. Well, I could get used to it.”

As Steve met that affectionate blue gaze, he knew that it was something he could get used to as well.

He saw the waiter approaching with their drinks, so he reluctantly let go of his boyfriend’s hand. Bucky grimaced, but said nothing.

“I was thinking that we could reveal my identity after the _Winter Soldier_ press tour,” Steve said, not wanting Bucky to get the wrong idea. “You won’t be making as many public appearances then, so things will have time to settle down a little.”

“And you’re okay with waiting that long?” Bucky checked. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to hide you, or anything.”

“Buck, you’re coming out on national television tomorrow night,” Steve reminded him gently. “I know you’re not hiding. But I think it’s smarter to wait. When you reveal my name, I want to reveal everything, including my ties to Tony.”

“You sure?” Bucky asked, eyes wide. “Tony’s even more famous than me. Finding out that he’s got an adopted brother who also happens to be dating me…people are going to be really, obnoxiously curious.”

Steve took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. He had committed to this. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“I know,” he said. “But I’m sick of the secrecy. And I’m not ashamed of Tony, and I don’t want him to think I am. Highly embarrassed sometimes, when he pulls his more…out-there stunts, but never ashamed. And if people are going to be talking about me anyway, I might as well make things more interesting for them. If any slash fiction of me and Tony shows up though, I’m never going on the internet again.”

Steve couldn’t decipher the look that Bucky was giving him.

“This is gonna be a long press tour,” the actor said eventually. “I’m gonna have a _really_ hard time not kissing you in public if you insist on being so damn perfect all the time.”

Steve felt his face split into a stupid smile.

“I’ll try to tone down the perfection,” he promised.

“You can’t,” Bucky despaired, throwing his hands in the air. “We’re in the honeymoon stage. You could probably push an old lady in front of a bus and I would still think you’re the best human being to ever grace this planet.”

“I would never!” Steve protested, and Bucky laughed.

“You’re hopeless,” he said, and Steve didn’t think that he would ever get tired of the way Bucky was looking at him.

“You’d get along great with Sam and Natasha,” he told his boyfriend. “They say the same thing with alarming regularity.”

“I’d really like to meet them,” Bucky said. “You mentioned they wanted to come to the _Winter Soldier_ premiere?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to-”

“Like I said, I want to. It’s not like it’ll be a hardship for me to get tickets, and I want to get to know your friends. They’re an important part of your life, Steve, and that means they’ll be part of mine too.”

Steve thought he knew what Bucky had been talking about earlier. As he met his boyfriend’s earnest, hopeful gaze, he wanted nothing more than to pull him across the table and kiss him until they were both senseless.

“Okay,” he said instead, his voice cracking a little. He cleared his throat, and Bucky smirked. “I was planning on calling Nat soon anyway. She and I need to have a serious conversation about her online browsing habits.”

Bucky grinned, but then looked away, seeming uncertain.

“Are you going to tell her about us?” he asked hesitantly.

Steve blinked, suddenly feeling unsure.

“I was going to?” he said, his tone making it sound like a question. “I mean, I tell her and Sam all of the important things, but if you’d rather I didn’t-”

“No, I want you to tell them, if you’re comfortable with it,” Bucky interrupted, looking relieved and pleased.

“Good,” Steve replied, relaxing. “I mean, Natasha is CIA and Sam was involved in a lot of classified army ops, so they can do discretion. And I’d hate to deprive them of the opportunity to make as many innuendos as they possibly can.”

“Oh, now that’ll be fun,” Bucky said, grinning. “You’re adorable when you blush.”

Of course, that was when Steve’s cheeks decided to flush, making Bucky burst into laughter. Steve was looking around for something to throw at him, when their food arrived, and he remembered that they were in a nice restaurant and should probably not start acting like a pair of five-year-olds.

Trip really had come through on the food. Everything tasted amazing, and Steve had to fend Bucky off with a fork when the actor tried to steal from his plate. They chatted as they ate, and it was so natural and easy compared to all of the other first dates that Steve had been on over the years.

Trip came out to sit with them once he had finished his shift. He was a really charismatic guy, and Steve enjoyed his company. It turned out that Gabe was actually coming to visit him next week while he was on leave. Steve hoped he might get the chance to visit his old friend before he left the city, but with Bucky’s busy schedule, it was unlikely.

They only left the restaurant when more and more people started coming in for the dinner rush.

“Was there anything else you wanted to do tonight?” Steve asked once he and Bucky were back in the car.

“Well, I was thinking we could go back to your apartment and try out some of the things in the sex drawer that your brother so thoughtfully provided,” Bucky said casually, but with a wicked smile on his lips.

Steve’s blood rushed up and down simultaneously, making his face hot and his pants tight. Bucky laughed and leaned across the console to kiss him.

“I think that sounds like a good plan,” Steve said once his mouth was free. He’d been aiming for casual, but was too breathless to really pull it off. “But for the sake of our lives, and the good people of Manhattan, I’m going to have to ask you to keep your hands to yourself while I’m driving.”

Bucky grinned and settled back into his side of the car, hands raised innocently.

Steve was very proud of himself for not crashing the car five minutes later, when Bucky’s hand made itself comfortable _very_ high up on his thigh.

*****

The elevator kidnapped them again, which Bucky was less than thrilled about. Steve just sighed when Jarvis refused to let them off on their floor, but he wrapped his arm around Bucky.

“Yeah, I’m definitely starting to see why you stayed in DC while you were hurt,” the actor grumbled, although he was not really upset. He evidently had Tony to thank for giving Steve the last push that he needed, so if the inventor wanted to gloat a little, Bucky would indulge him. For approximately five minutes. After that, he was grabbing Steve and running for the stairs.

“He means well,” Steve sighed.

Bucky just snorted and leaned into his boyfriend’s side.

When the elevator finally released them, they found themselves on Tony’s main floor. The engineer was waiting for them with a smug look. He also had a bottle of scotch, so Bucky felt a little more charitable towards him. He knew from experience that Stark had the best alcohol. It was enough to get him out of the elevator at least, grabbing Steve’s hand as he went.

“I figured this was cause for celebration,” Tony said. “It may have taken twenty years to figure out your shit, but you got there in the end. With the instrumental help of yours truly, of course.”

“You know, I like to think we would’ve gotten there ourselves, eventually,” Steve said, looking fondly exasperated.

“Yes, but it would’ve taken you another twenty years, and no one wanted that.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but accepted the glass of scotch that Tony held out to him. Bucky was handed a glass as well, and Tony held up his own drink.

“To my two favorite idiots finally getting just a little bit smarter,” he toasted.

Bucky met Steve’s eyes, and they shared a grin. They all clinked their glasses together and sipped their drinks. Steve raised an eyebrow.

“Aw Tony, you broke out the forty-year-old Balvenie for us?” he asked with a note of teasing. “I didn’t know you cared so much.”

“Hey, I’m celebrating for myself too,” Tony declared. “I no longer have to watch you pine. And I’m holding out hope that Barnes will be able to loosen you up a little.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Bucky warned his friend.

Steve rolled his eyes and punched Bucky in the arm. It was the metal one, so there was a faint dinging noise, and Tony’s grin turned predatory.

“You know, my offer from before still stands,” he said slyly.

Bucky didn’t know what he was talking about, but evidently Steve did, because his face turned crimson and he downed the rest of his scotch in one go.

“And there ends the group bonding portion of the evening,” he said, taking Bucky’s hand and pulling him toward the elevator. “Thanks for the scotch and the gloating, Tony. Have a good night.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow at his boyfriend once they were safely back in the elevator, amused at how flustered he was.

“What did he offer?” he asked, sipping at the drink that he was still holding.

Steve’s blush deepened, which was pretty impressive, considering how red he’d already been.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, looking relieved when the elevator door opened at their floor.

“That’s a hell of a blush for something that doesn’t matter, Steve,” Bucky pressed, smirking, as he followed the man into the apartment that was already starting to feel like home.

Steve just shut the door and pulled Bucky into a breath-stealing kiss. As far as distraction techniques went, it was pretty effective. Still, when they broke apart for air, he asked again. Steve groaned and let his forehead fall against Bucky’s.

“You’re relentless,” he sighed.

“The sooner you tell me, the sooner we can move on to activities that require significantly less talking,” Bucky wheedled, letting a wicked smile creep onto his face, knowing how it affected Steve.

Steve just let out a sigh of defeat and buried his face against Bucky’s shoulder, pressing light kisses to the scar tissue where metal met man.

“He offered to upgrade your arm,” Steve murmured against his skin. “So that your fingers would work as vibrators.”

Bucky froze in surprise, because while he was not quite sure what he had been expecting, he knew that wasn’t it. Then he burst out laughing, because that was so Tony.

“I knew there was a reason I liked that guy,” he told Steve, who just shook his head. “Although I will admit that the interest he takes in your sex life is getting a little weird.”

Steve huffed out a laugh.

“I think he’s just relieved that I finally _have_ a sex life again,” he said. “I was, uh, going through a pretty serious dry spell.”

Bucky smiled and curled his fingers into Steve’s hair, drawing him close again. He pressed a tender kiss to his boyfriend’s lips.

“How about we work on fixing that?” he breathed.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who doesn't know, _The Daily Show_ is a satire news program on Comedy Central. Each episode consists of two segments of parody news, and then ends with a celebrity interview.

Bucky woke up with a smile on his face, and when he remembered why he was so happy, his smile widened even further. He felt the warm weight of Steve pressed against his side, and when he opened his eyes, that breathtaking face was just inches from his own. Finally, _finally_ , they were waking up together for the right reasons. That face would be the first thing Bucky got to see every morning, for the rest of his life, he hoped.

He couldn’t resist leaning forward to kiss Steve lightly on the nose. His boyfriend’s lips twitched into a soft smile, and his gorgeous blue eyes blinked open. Bucky didn’t think he would ever get tired of the way Steve looked at him like he was something precious.

“Good morning,” the blond murmured, his hand coming up to touch Bucky’s face. “Sleep well?”

“Better than I have in seventeen years,” Bucky told him honestly.

“Me too.”

Bucky wasn’t sure who initiated the kiss, but soon they were tangled even closer together, lips moving in comfortable tandem as they explored each other. It was languid and unhurried and felt so amazingly _nice_ that Bucky still couldn’t quite believe that this was happening, that all of his deepest, most painfully unattainable dreams had come true just like that.

As if sensing Bucky’s thoughts, Steve’s touch became more insistent, demanding to be noticed. And Bucky knew that he was not still dreaming, because he never could have imagined how good this felt. He pulled Steve on top of him, relishing the feeling of skin on skin as he licked ever deeper into his boyfriend’s mouth. Steve rolled his hips slowly, sending tingles of electricity through Bucky’s body and dragging a low groan from his throat.

Steve just kept moving in his slow, steady rhythm, fingers scraping lightly over Bucky’s scalp and mouth moving searchingly against his. Bucky reached between their bodies and took them both in his hand, stroking them in time with Steve’s thrusts. Before long, they were coming within moments of each other, and Bucky hummed in contentment when Steve settled against his chest.

“ _Very_ good morning,” Bucky declared, and Steve’s answering chuckle vibrated through both of them.

“I’ve certainly had worse,” he said dryly. He kissed the underside of Bucky’s jaw, before rolling away with a groan and sitting up. “And while I would love nothing more than to spend the rest of the day in bed with you, I’m afraid we both have big boy responsibilities.”

He climbed out of bed and Bucky followed with little enthusiasm. His reluctance faded considerably when he realized that team showers were still a thing.

*****

They didn’t really have time for anything fancy, so they sat down across from each other at the kitchen table with bowls of cereal. Steve knocked his knee gently against Bucky’s.

“You’re coming out today,” he stated, his gaze searching.

Bucky took a deep breath and gave him a brief smile.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly.

“You nervous?”

“If I say yes, will I get a kiss for courage?”

Steve rolled his eyes at Bucky’s hopeful smirk, but he was smiling.

“I think that can be arranged.”

“Good. I _am_ a little nervous, yeah, but it’s a good kind of nervous.” It really was. This day had been a long time in coming, and Bucky was looking forward to not hiding anymore, and to everything that coming out meant. He held his boyfriend’s gaze steadily. “No second thoughts, Steve.”

Steve seemed to understand everything that he was trying to say, because his smile softened into that incredibly bright and tender expression that made Bucky feel like his insides were melting.

“Good,” he said. “Me neither.”

They didn’t say anything else as they ate, but Steve kept his knee pressed against Bucky’s. Soon they were hurrying out the door and down into the parking garage, where Bucky assumed his usual place in the passenger seat of the rental car as they headed out to start the day.

The actor’s schedule was absolutely packed with interviews, and it would have been hellish under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances, because Bucky had the love of his life with him, at his side every moment right up until the cameras started rolling. Even then Steve was always within sight, just off to the side, pulling faces to make Bucky smile when he was on the verge of getting frustrated. There were almost always too many people around for Bucky to touch his boyfriend like he wanted to, but just having him there was more than enough.

That didn’t stop Bucky from giving Clint a hard time when the agent called him between interviews early that afternoon.

“You are a brave man, Clint Barton,” he growled into the phone. “I’m really not feeling very kindly towards the person who booked my _entire_ day with interviews.”

“You don’t scare me, Barnes,” Clint retorted. “Especially not from three thousand miles away. Also, I was under the impression that you were an actor. Interviews are a part of the acting business, my friend.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky grumbled.

“Anyway, you’re doing great. You dodge questions with remarkable finesse.”

“Well if they would ask me questions about the damn movie that I’m supposed to be promoting, I wouldn’t have to dodge anything,” Bucky said, annoyed, though not at Clint. “But all they want to know about is my tragic backstory and whether or not it’s true that I’m into dudes.”

Bucky hadn’t actually been dodging most of the questions about his history in the foster system. He didn’t want people to think that he was ashamed of it, and he still hoped that it would help kids out there. But any and all questions about his sexuality went untouched.

“Speaking of, you ready for tonight?” Clint asked.

“As ready as I can be,” Bucky sighed, a fresh swoop of nervousness hitting him. “I’ll talk to Stewart when I get to the studio, make sure he’s on board. Then all that’s left is to come out in style.”

“You’ll do great, James,” Clint encouraged earnestly. “Of course, that being said, you might want to avoid the internet for a little while afterwards.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Bucky snorted. He knew how it was. At least he didn’t have his own twitter account or anything like that for people to send the vitriol to him directly. “And, uh, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that if Stewart asks if I’m seeing anyone right now, the answer’s gonna be yes.”

There was a brief pause.

“Good for you, James,” Clint said, sounding sincere. “I thought you seemed happier than usual.”

“Yeah? That why you figured it was safe to call?” Bucky asked with a smirk.

“Yeah, sure. Just tell Rogers that if he gives you any hickies, they’d better be in places that you don’t display to the public.”

Bucky chuckled, glad that his agent really didn’t seem to mind the relationship. He knew that if Steve’s work suffered, it would be a different story, but he was equally confident that wouldn’t happen.

“I realize you can’t see it from your cushy office, but I’m flipping you off right now,” he informed Clint.

“Oh don’t worry, I’m familiar with the sight,” the agent replied dryly.

“Anyway, we’re keeping his identity secret until the press tour is over,” Bucky went on, more serious now. “It’s gonna cause a buzz, and believe it or not, we really do care about promoting the movie.”

“Why will it cause a buzz?” Clint demanded. “The guy is just an ordinary veteran.”

“There is nothing ordinary about Steve Rogers,” Bucky said, affronted. “And I’m not the only one who knows it. But I’ll have to fill you in later, because I need to go do an interview that _you_ scheduled.”

“Yeah, yeah. Break a leg, and all that.”

“Oh, and Clint?” Bucky said before the other man could hang up. “Could you arrange for two VIP tickets for the premiere on Friday? Names are Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanoff.”

There was a brief spluttering sound on the other end of the line. At first Bucky was afraid that Clint was angry with him for asking on such short notice, but then-

“You know Natasha Romanoff?” Clint asked incredulously.

“Erm, not personally, but she’s a good friend of Steve’s,” Bucky said, confused. “Why, do you know her?”

“We dated in college,” Clint told him, and okay, Bucky had not been expecting that.

“You what?”

“Well, it was years ago, but she’s not the kind of person you forget. We graduated as just friends, and we kept in touch for a while. Still, I hadn’t spoken to her in almost two years, but she called me out of the blue a few months ago and asked me if you remembered your childhood.”

Bucky absorbed that in silence for a moment. The he shook his head and let out an incredulous laugh.

“Steve was right,” he said. “She did set us up. Or the universe did, if you want to go with his other theory.”

At that very moment, Steve poked his head into the greenroom.

“A really scary PA is on her way to come get you,” he informed Bucky. “You might want to be ready when she gets here.”

Bucky gave him a nod and a grateful smile.

“Duty calls,” he told Clint.

“Okay. But you and I are going to have a _long_ conversation later.”

“I look forward to it,” Bucky said dryly. “Bye, Clint.”

He hung up and was about to put his phone back in his pocket when a PA marched past Steve into the greenroom. She took one look at the phone and snatched it from his hand.

“No phones on the stage,” she told him sternly.

“It’s on silent?” Bucky tried. She just glowered at him.

“I’ll take it, ma’am,” Steve said, looking like he was struggling not to laugh.

The PA stared at him suspiciously, but when Bucky told her it was fine, she handed over the smartphone. Steve gave Bucky a sympathetic look as the PA all but dragged him to the stage. The actor just sighed and settled in for another round of questioning.

*****

Steve was impressed by how well Bucky held up under the veritable onslaught of interviews. The bodyguard knew that he personally would have gone insane after the third time someone asked him who the hottest person he’d ever worked with was. Of course, whenever Bucky got that question -- which really was three times, Jesus Christ didn’t these people have better things to worry about? -- he would just smirk and glance over at where Steve was standing before giving the interviewer some stupid answer like the seventy-five-year-old prop guy, and Steve would get a tingling feeling in his stomach, so it wasn’t all bad. It did make keeping his hands off Bucky more challenging though. The only time they got to touch was when they were driving to their next interview, and since Steve was always the one driving, this wasn’t really much of an opportunity.

The day took an interesting turn in the late afternoon, when Bucky had his first joint interview with his _Winter Soldier_ co-star, Skye. Steve had seen her once, at the club, but they had never been formally introduced. The second they got into the studio though, Bucky dragged him over to meet his friend. The young woman smiled when she saw them coming.

“James!” she greeted cheerfully, tugging him into a hug. “I knew I hadn’t imagined working on this movie with you.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry we haven’t gotten the chance to hang out much,” Bucky apologized. “I’ve been pretty busy.”

“I’ll say,” Skye snorted. “What is this, your fourth interview today?”

“Sixth.”

“Ugh. It’s only my third, and I’m already worn out. Still, at least with you here, they might ask me fewer questions about what kind of underwear I wear.”

“Yeah, instead they’ll just ask me what my favorite part of your body is,” Bucky replied, making a face.

“Did someone really ask you that?” Steve inquired incredulously, because he had _not_ watched every single interview Bucky had ever given, no matter what Tony might think.

“Some people have no boundaries,” Bucky informed him grimly.

“And some people have no manners,” Skye added, elbowing Bucky in the ribs and nodding at Steve. “I demand to be introduced to the hottest guy in the studio.”

“Oh, right,” Bucky said, looking adorably sheepish. “Skye, this is Steve Rogers, my, uh, bodyguard. Steve, this is Skye, and like Thor, she’s too cool for last names.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Skye,” Steve said, reaching out to shake the actress’s hand.

“Oh, you too, believe me,” Skye replied, and Steve felt his face heat under her appreciative gaze.

“I’m afraid Steve is spoken for,” Bucky said quickly, and Steve bit back a smile.

Skye’s expression turned appraising, and she raised an eyebrow at her friend. Bucky gave her a wink and a bashful smile, and she looked downright gleeful. She let out a noise that could only be described as a squeal and gave her friend another hug. Bucky chuckled but gave her a warning look, so she schooled her features back into a more casual mask and returned her gaze to Steve.

“Ah well,” she said with a friendly grin and an unconcerned shrug. “It’s still a nice view.”

“Hey, my eyes are up here,” Steve joked as she gave him another once-over.

“That they are,” Skye agreed. “And those really are some gorgeous baby-blues you’ve got there, Steve.”

“Would you stop harassing my bodyguard?” Bucky grumbled, and this time Steve couldn’t hide his smile. Neither could Skye, apparently, because she just gave the actor an innocent grin and patted him on the head.

“And miss out on your adorable jealousy?” she asked. “You know I’m not that nice.”

She winked at Steve, who couldn’t help grinning back. Bucky scowled at both of them, but before he could say anything, a couple of PA’s descended on the two actors and whisked them away for hair and makeup, even though they both looked flawless already. Steve figured it was as good a time as any to call his friends, so he pulled out his phone and tapped the contact for Natasha’s most recent number.

“Oh, so you do still have my phone number,” the spy teased when she answered.

“How could I not, with all those lovely messages you’ve been sending?”

“I just thought you might like to know how much the public already appreciates you,” Nat said sweetly, and Steve rolled his eyes. He couldn’t find it within himself to be even remotely annoyed with her though. Bucky had told him in the car about his conversation with Clint, which had confirmed his suspicions about her organizing all of this.

“You could’ve told me, you know,” he said anyway, because as grateful as he was, some warning might have been nice.

“I did tell you,” Natasha said, but Steve could tell by her tone that she was only feigning innocence. “That’s kind of what the texts were for.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” she sighed. “And you’re right, I could have told you, but I wanted you to go into personal protection because it was what you wanted to do, not because you thought it would give you the chance to be with your friend. And then I figured it would be best if you two worked things out between yourselves. But I would’ve said something, if you’d decided not to join SHIELD.” She paused. “I didn’t know he thought you were dead though. Sam told me about that.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, accepting what he was pretty sure had been an unspoken apology. “And it probably worked out for the best this way. I’m not sure I would’ve been brave enough to take this job if I knew he remembered me.”

“You two are still getting along then?” Natasha asked, a sly note creeping into her tone. “Did you show him the fanfic?”

“I did, actually,” Steve said, smirking. “I mean, we didn’t _read_ it, but I did look at the tags. They got it wrong, you know. He topped.”

Steve was usually pretty private about his sex life, but Natasha had always ignored that kind of boundary with him, so it was a little easier to talk to her about it. And it was totally worth divulging the information to hear the spluttered choking noise that his usually unflappable friend made.

“Are you kidding?” she demanded once she had regained control of her vocal cords.

Steve heard the sound of Sam’s voice in the background. Natasha must have been at his apartment.

“Do you mean to tell me that my matchmaking efforts have finally paid off?” the spy went on, ignoring her boyfriend. Sam’s voice increased significantly in volume, and Steve heard the change in sound quality that suggested he had been put on speaker.

“You’re doing it with James Barnes?” Sam demanded.

Steve glanced around making sure that no one was close enough to overhear the conversation. Everyone was focused on Bucky and Skye.

“What can I say?” Steve asked with a shrug that neither of his friends could see. “Nat’s a good wingman.”

Sam was the one spluttering this time while Natasha let out a triumphant noise.

“Does this mean you got us tickets to the premiere?” she asked.

“He just told us that he’s dating the man he’s been pining over for two decades, who also happens to be a famous actor, and you’re worried about a movie premiere?” Sam asked her incredulously.

“Well obviously I want to scope out the boyfriend,” Natasha said. “That’s easier to do when we’re in the same city.

“You seem to have managed just fine from the opposite coast,” Steve cut in dryly.

“That was just basic recon,” Nat dismissed. “Now that you two are actually together, I need to up my game.”

“Oh god,” Steve muttered, afraid of what exactly that entailed.

“You _are_ together, right?” Sam asked. “It wasn’t just a one-time thing?”

“We’re both serious about it,” Steve told them. “And I’m sure it doesn’t need saying, but we’d really appreciate your discretion.”

“Of course, man,” Sam said immediately. “But…I mean, he’s not keeping you secret, is he? Because no judgment here or anything, but I’m not really sure that’s the best foundation for a relationship.”

“I know. And no, he’s not going to keep me a secret. You two should really watch _The Daily Show_ tonight. But we’re withholding my identity until after the press tour, because we don’t want the inevitable media explosion to interfere with the movie. We’re going to tell everyone about the whole Tony thing too, so it’s going to be pretty obnoxious.”

Steve grimaced as he thought about it. He had been dead serious when he’d promised Bucky that he wasn’t having any second thoughts, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to the media circus.

“Wow,” Sam said. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

“I’m ready to stop hiding,” Steve told his friends. “And I’m sure about Bucky. He’s…we’re…it’s good, what we have. It’s really good.”

“Then we’re really happy for you, Steve,” Natasha said warmly. “God knows you deserve it.”

“Thanks,” Steve said with a smile. “And, you know, _thanks_. But can you be happy for me from the airplane? There’s this big movie premiere in Manhattan the day after tomorrow, and this friend of mine managed to get two extra VIP tickets for you guys.”

His smile widened as he listened to his friends’ cheers and what he was pretty sure was the sound of a high five.

“We’ll be at LaGuardia at 11:45 tomorrow morning,” Natasha promised.

“Well that’s specific,” Steve said suspiciously.

“I may have already booked the plane tickets,” the spy replied, unabashed.

“When?” Steve demanded.

“Uh, when did you accept Fury’s job offer?”

Steve rolled his eyes, and Sam just snorted.

“Well, I hope you didn’t book a hotel too, because you’ll be staying in Stark Tower,” Steve informed them. “Bucky and I have been staying there since the second night, and there’s a guest suite on my floor that’s all yours.”

“You know you don’t have to ask us twice,” Sam said.

“Good. Well, I have to get off the phone now because they’re about to go on air, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I’ll see if Bucky and I can come pick you up from the airport, but if not, I’ll have Tony send someone.”

“Sure thing,” Sam said. “See you tomorrow, man.”

“Bye Steve,” Natasha added. “I’m a real fan of chocolate truffles, in case you wanted to thank me for landing you the hottest guy in America.”

Steve rolled his eyes again and chuckled as he hung up on the sounds of Sam’s indignant protests.

*****

By the time they finally got to the _Daily Show_ studio, Steve could tell that Bucky was both exhausted and keyed up. Steve took his hand and squeezed it before he could get out of the car.

“You ready?” he asked gently.

Bucky met his gaze and took a deep breath, returning the pressure on his hand. He nodded firmly. Steve smiled encouragingly and leaned over to give him his promised kiss for courage. Bucky returned it with a desperation that betrayed his nervousness, and pulled away only reluctantly.

“You’re gonna do great,” Steve assured him

Bucky gave him a small smile and another nod, and they got out of the car. They were soon greeted by a few PA’s and shuffled into yet another greenroom. Jon Stewart himself came in after a while to introduce himself to Bucky and go over some potential talking points for the interview. He was surprised when the actor told him about his plan to come out during the interview, but he was more than happy to go along with it.

“I know that takes a lot of guts,” he said. “And I’m honored that you’ve chosen my show to do it.”

He had to leave pretty quickly to host the show, but he shook Bucky’s hand on the way out. There was a monitor in the greenroom so that they could watch the show as it was recorded. It really was a funny program, and Steve could tell that it was distracting Bucky and keeping him from getting too nervous. When the first commercial break came though, he started to go alarmingly pale.

They were sitting next to each other on the couch, so Steve took his hand again. Bucky leaned into his side, letting out a heavy breath. He rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand.

“I shouldn’t be this nervous,” he muttered. “I mean, everyone I care about already knows. It’s just…”

“It’s scary,” Steve said gently. “I know. And it’s fine. But I’ll be right here the whole time, and if you need me, Buck, I swear I will run straight onto that stage and take you in my arms.”

Bucky chuckled, though there was a watery quality to the sound.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said.

“We should have a distress word, just in case,” Steve said. He was mostly joking. He really would charge the stage if Bucky needed him, but he knew it wouldn’t be necessary. Bucky was too strong for that.

“Hmm,” Bucky said, biting his lip. Then he grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “How about ‘Bueller’?”

Steve laughed.

“‘Bueller’ it is,” he agreed.

Bucky just shook his head and looked at Steve with something like wonder. Steve wasn’t sure he deserved that, but he wasn’t about to tell him to stop. The actor just raised their intertwined hands and brushed a kiss to Steve’s knuckles. Steve smiled -- because it tickled, not because he was as sappy as his goddamn perfect boyfriend -- and Bucky smiled back. Then Jon Stewart got back to work and they sat back and laughed as he and his team presented their ridiculous reports for another several minutes.

It seemed like no time at all before they were moving into their second commercial break and a crewmember was coming to collect Bucky. Steve stayed by his side as the actor was led to a waiting area just off the main stage, so that he would be ready to walk out as soon as Stewart introduced him. Steve couldn’t take his hand again with all the people around, but he held Bucky’s gaze steadily and gave him a bracing smile, and it seemed to help.

Before they knew it, a clip from _The Winter Soldier_ was playing, and then Stewart was calling Bucky to the stage amidst a chorus of cheers from the audience. Steve gave the actor one last nod and smile of encouragement, and then watched with pride as his boyfriend squared his shoulders and took to the stage, smiling and waving at the audience before shaking Stewart’s hand and taking his seat at the desk. Once the audience had stopped screaming, Stewart leaned across the desk towards Bucky.

“So obviously we can expect your usual levels of awesome from this movie,” he said.

“Well, it does have a pretty outstanding cast. Except for that one guy they’ve got playing the Winter Soldier; I’m not sure where they found him.”

This got a typical chuckle from the audience, and Bucky waited for it to die down before he went on.

“But in all seriousness, it really is a fantastic movie. I’m so glad I got the chance to be a part of it, because it’s definitely something special. It’s got a real depth to it, while also delivering all the thrill and excitement and drama of your typical action movie. That’s a rare blend, and I think it works amazingly well here.”

“Speaking of excitement and drama, I’m sure you’re aware that there’s been a lot of speculation surrounding your press tour so far,” Stewart said, and Bucky nodded. “You revealed that you spent some time in the foster system, under an abusive foster father, and that a series of devastating losses led you to join the military and spend almost a decade of your life serving your country. So naturally, all everyone is talking about it the possibility that you’re gay.”

Stewart’s tone was ironic, and it drew laughter from Bucky and the audience.

“Yeah, it’s interesting that people chose to fixate on that,” Bucky said dryly. “I’m told it has something to do with the way I talked about my foster brother, Grant. Everyone assumed that I was in love with him.”

“And is there anything you’d like to say about that assumption?”

“Well sure, Jon. I’m more than happy to say that it’s 100% true.”

There was a beat of silence, and then an earsplitting wave of noise came from the audience. Steve had to look at one of the monitor screens to see Bucky’s face, and was relieved to see that he was still smiling, although he did look a little overwhelmed.

“So just to be clear,” Jon called when he had a prayer of being heard. “Just to be clear-”

“This is me coming out to the world as bisexual,” Bucky confirmed, and the noise was even more deafening this time.

It was impossible to make out specific words in the cacophony, but the tone was resoundingly positive. Steve couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face at the show of support for Bucky. This had been a good venue for coming out.

“Well first of all, I’d like to be the first to extend my congratulations to you for taking this huge step,” Jon said once the noise was back at manageable levels.

“Thanks, Jon,” Bucky said, and although Steve could hear the slight waver in his voice, he sounded happy. “It feels good. I know there are gonna be some challenges, but I’m not ashamed of who I am, and I’m glad I finally found the courage to stop acting like I am. I spend enough time pretending to be someone I’m not for my job, it was time to stop doing that for my life as well.”

That got another cheer, and Steve realized abruptly that his eyes were blurry. He wiped hastily at the dampness, not wanting to draw attention to himself by bursting into tears.

“Now I have to ask, does this mean that you’re seeing someone now?”

“It does, actually, although I would’ve come out even if that weren’t the case. But yeah, I’m dating Grant.”

He had a goofy smile on his face, and Jon noticed.

“Now that, that is the look of a man who is totally head over heels,” he said, waving his pen at Bucky with a smile of his own.

“What can I say?” Bucky asked, raising his hands. “Grant was always the best thing that ever happened to me, and that hasn’t changed.”

There was a chorus of ‘aw’s from the audience, and okay, Steve had a goofy smile on his face too.

“Are we ever going to know this guy by anything besides an alias?” Stewart asked.

“Yeah, we’ve decided to introduce him to the public officially at the end of the press tour. You guys are gonna love him.”

“Do we even get a hint?” Jon asked. “You’ve gotta give people something to speculate about now that you’ve clarified your sexuality.”

“All right, all right,” Bucky laughed. “I will say that he’s an amazingly talented artist.”

Steve grinned. Well, that should help the speculation from turning to him. People wouldn’t expect the burly bodyguard to be an artist as well.

“Does he draw you like one of his French girls?” Jon asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Now there’s an idea,” Bucky snorted.

“So can I ask, why now? Is there a specific reason you decided to come out now, or did it just feel like the right time, or what?”

“Honestly, the reasons for coming out just started piling up, and I realized that I actually didn’t have any reasons at all for staying closeted. I mean, when I joined the military, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in full swing, so I had to keep that part of myself hidden, or face some pretty unpleasant consequences. And after nine years of that, I guess I just got used to the hiding, and while Hollywood is getting better and better about equality and representation, I knew there was still a lot of discrimination. So it just seemed easiest to keep my sexuality to myself. And I was keeping so much of my history and my self private anyway, for reasons I’ve discussed in several interviews now, so it wasn’t that hard.

But then Grant came back into my life, and it brought everything that I’d been suppressing right back to the surface. There’s no way I could ever be ashamed of my feelings for him, and I didn’t want there to be any doubt about that. And like I said, the reasons kept piling up, and I knew it was time.”

“Well, it’s been-” Jon made a show of checking his watch, “almost four whole minutes. How does it feel?”

“It still feels good, Jon,” Bucky said, grinning. “But I’ll let you know in another four minutes if that changes.”

“And do you have any concerns about how this announcement might affect your career?”

“Not really. I mean, if there are people who refuse to work with me because of my sexuality, then they’re not people I’d want to work with in the first place. And being true to myself, and to Grant, is more important to me than my career. But I honestly believe that I can have both.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you can count on having a few people in your corner,” Jon said, nodding towards the audience, who let out an affirmative cheer.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, smiling at his and Jon’s fans. “Thanks for that, guys. It means a lot to me.”

From the corner of his eye, Steve saw one of the crewmembers signaling Jon that it was time to wrap up.

“Well, my friend, is there anything else you’d like to say before we run out of time?” the host asked.

“Yeah, actually. I want to thank in advance all of the people who are gonna be in my corner for this. I’ve got some really amazing fans out there, and I hope that I can continue to count on you for your support. And I just want to say to all of those people who are disappointed or disgusted by this news: I’m the happiest that I’ve ever been in my life, and if you resent that, you might want to take a closer look at your own life and see where it went wrong, instead of worrying about mine.”

Another cheer went up.

“James Barnes, everybody!” Jon shouted over the noise.

*****

Bucky didn’t stop shaking until he was back in the car, alone with Steve. The interview had gone well, and they’d had to stay in the studio for almost three hours after filming stopped because what seemed like every single person in the studio had wanted to talk to him and give him their support. He appreciated it more than he could say, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a relief when Steve finally led him away to the peace of the car.

“I’m proud of you, Buck,” Steve said, twining his fingers with Bucky’s metal ones. “You did an incredible job.”

Bucky gave him a smile, wide and relieved. It had been scary and stressful and exhausting, and so, so worth it.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” he replied.

“Yes, you could’ve,” Steve told him firmly, leaning over to press a quick kiss to Bucky’s temple. “But I’m glad you didn’t have to.”

“Me too.”

By the time they managed to get back to the Tower, the episode had actually aired. Stewart had helped Bucky make an announcement to the audience after they’d finished taping, asking them to keep the actor’s revelation to themselves until the episode went live. Bucky had been a little skeptical about how many of them would actually manage to restrain themselves, but he didn’t really care. The news would get out there on way or another.

While they were in the elevator, Bucky felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He pulled it out to see a new text from Skye.

**You were amazing and I am so so proud of you**

Bucky smiled. He’d told his friend about his plans for coming out when they’d been in the studio together for their joint interview, and she’d been equal parts excited and nervous for him. Her encouragement meant a lot to him.

**Thanks. I think I may have to sleep for about a year to recover though.**

He sent that and then turned his phone off, knowing that Skye would understand. It was done, it was out there, and Bucky just wanted to disconnect from it all for a while as the news made its inevitable rounds and waves.

The moment the apartment door closed behind them, Bucky melted into Steve’s arms, glad that he finally could. He pressed his nose into Steve’s neck and took a deep breath, letting his boyfriend’s soothing scent wash over him. Warm hands rubbed gentle circles on his back, and he let out a sigh of contentment.

“You okay?” Steve asked him.

“I’m okay,” Bucky confirmed. “I’m good, actually. I just also feel like I’ve run about five marathons.”

Steve chuckled and pulled away until he was holding Bucky by the shoulders.

“I’m not sure if you noticed, but my bathroom has an exceptionally nice tub,” he said. “I don’t use it very often, but I think today has really been a bath kind of day. What do you say?”

“I say that if I get into a tub full of warm water with you right now, there’s an extremely high chance that I will never get out.”

“You don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow,” Steve said with a shrug and a smile.

“Then you and I are gonna go take a bath. But you’d better be on lifeguard duty, Agent Rogers, because I will be very upset if I fall asleep and drown and miss out on the rest of my life with you. Understood?”

Steve pulled Bucky close and gave him a kiss that did wonders for his awareness levels.

“Understood.”

*****

Bucky really did fall asleep in the bath, which Steve found both adorable and endearing. He upheld his lifeguarding duties, reluctantly nudging Bucky awake for just long enough to get him dried off and into a pair of pajama pants, before letting him fall asleep again, this time in an actual bed. Steve’s bed. That would never get old.

Steve could not resist just looking at Bucky for a moment. He looked so peaceful, his beautiful features relaxed with sleep and contentment. As Steve got into bed himself and pulled Bucky close, he vowed to do whatever he could to keep that peace on his boyfriend’s face during his waking hours as well. God knew the man deserved it.

He knew it wouldn’t always be smooth sailing, but he would be there for it, and that was what mattered.


	13. Chapter 13

“Did the Broadway Channel ruin you for theater?” Steve asked the next morning over breakfast.

“Um, what?” asked Bucky, who was still not a morning person, despite the fact that they had slept until ten.

“I was just thinking that it might be fun to go see something on Broadway together when Natasha and Sam get here,” Steve elaborated. “Nat loves theater, and Sam pretends that he doesn’t, but that’s a lie. We don’t have to go see one of the shows that you know by heart though. Or we could do something else entirely. I just thought it might be good to have something to _do_ with them, so you can be spared the full brunt of their, uh, enthusiasm.”

“Oh. No, Broadway sounds good. So long as it’s not _Hairspray, The King and I, Mamma Mia,_ or _Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat_ , I’m good.”

“Aw, you had _Mamma Mia_ ruined for you?”

“I’m not sure ruined is the right word, but unless you want me to annoy your friends by reciting the entire show as we’re watching it, we should probably pick something else.”

“No problem.”

Steve went to get his computer, and they spent the next few minutes browsing through the shows that were available for the day.

“Remember the last time we went to see something on Broadway?” Bucky asked eventually.

Steve thought about it and smiled.

“My birthday, the year before my mom got sick,” he said. “She surprised me with the tickets that morning. We went to see _Fiddler on the Roof_ , and you wouldn’t stop singing _If I were a Rich Man_ for like two months.”

“Okay, it was definitely closer to one month,” Bucky protested.

“I don’t think so, Barnes.”

They lapsed into silence. Steve clicked through a few unpromising webpages. When he looked up again, he was startled to see that Bucky’s face looked pinched and sad.

“What is it, Buck?” he asked in concern.

Bucky jumped as if he had been lost in thought. He focused on Steve and bit his lip, looking like he was deliberating something. Then he sighed.

“I was just thinking about your birthday,” he said.

“Okay, and that made you look like someone kicked your dog, why?”

“It’s just, uh, been a pretty rough day for me in the past,” Bucky said, staring down at his empty plate.

“Oh.” Steve should have realized. Bucky’s birthday had never been particularly easy for him after the accident, and he hadn’t been under the impression that he had gotten his best friend killed.

Bucky looked up and gave him a humorless smile.

“People always wondered why a party boy like me never went to any Fourth of July parties.”

Steve’s heart ached sharply, and he reached over to squeeze Bucky’s hand. There was nothing left to say, and Bucky shook his head after a moment.

“But hey, think how much fun we’ll have on your next birthday,” he said in an obvious attempt to lighten the solemn mood that had fallen over them. “We’ll go to Coney Island again, and I won’t make you ride the Cyclone this time, and we’ll watch the fireworks that they put on just for you.”

Steve smiled. It had been a running joke between them for as long as either could remember that the fireworks were for Steve’s birthday, not America’s.

“It’s a date,” he said, and Bucky’s smile became significantly less forced.

“That one.”

“What?” Steve asked, confused by the abrupt non sequitur.

Bucky pointed at the computer screen, which Steve had all but forgotten about.

“That’s the show we should see.”

Steve read the title, and his eyebrows shot up.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said with the wicked grin that always meant either trouble or an indecent amount of fun. Sometimes both at the same time. “That’s the one. Book it.”

*****

Bucky had never been all that big a fan of technology. He appreciated its usefulness, sure, but he wasn’t the type to check his phone every other minute. In fact, he forgot that he’d turned it off the night before until they passed a billboard with some add about not texting and driving. Since it wasn’t a good idea for him to be unreachable for long periods of time, he fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and turned it back on.

Apparently he hadn’t made it past his lock screen since yesterday. He blinked down at his wallpaper, a startled laugh escaping him.

“I didn’t know your face could even _do_ that,” he told Steve in response to his questioning look.

He held up the phone, displaying the picture that had most definitely not been his background the morning before. Steve must have changed it when he rescued the phone from the overzealous PA yesterday. It was a close-up of the bodyguard making the derpiest face that Bucky had ever seen. It was also Bucky’s new favorite photo.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve said with a grin. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“Do I even want to know how you figured out my passcode?”

“Like I said; many talents.”

“Right…” Bucky said, drawing out the word skeptically. Steve might have had many talents, but he liked technology about as much as his boyfriend did.

“Okay, so I’m also a man with access to the world’s most advanced AI.”

“That sounds more like it.”

*****

Steve insisted that Bucky could stay in the car when they got to the airport, but he refused to be afraid of going out in public. His interview the night before had felt like cresting a mountain, and nothing seemed quite as scary from up here. Besides, he didn’t want for Sam and Natasha’s first impression of him to be hiding in a car.

So he marched into the airport right beside Steve. Most people didn’t spare him a second glance as they walked up to the flight board to check the arrival time and gate number. Bucky did see a couple of camera phones pointed his way, but he was used to that. Thankfully, the flight was on time, and they were only waiting for a few minutes before something over Bucky’s shoulder caught Steve’s attention and made him smile.

“Brace yourself. Trouble just landed.”

Bucky turned to see a crowd of passengers from the latest flight. He recognized Steve’s friends easily from the pictures and sketches that he had seen of them. Natasha had her fiery hair pulled back in a braid, and she walked with the kind of confidence that meant she knew how to handle herself. She was walking hand in hand with Sam, who had kind eyes and handsome features. They had seen Steve, so they were both beaming, but they apparently didn’t want to cause a scene by rushing him. Steve and Bucky walked forward to meet them halfway, and Steve pulled his friends into a group hug.

Natasha rolled her eyes but hugged him back, and Sam just laughed and dropped the handle of the carry-on suitcase he’d been wheeling behind him so that he could clap Steve on the back.

“Man, it definitely feels like it’s been more than a week since we saw you,” he complained.

“Well, what can I say?” Steve asked. “Life is just meaningless when I’m not around.”

“And he says _my_ ego is big,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes.

That drew their attention to him, and Steve finally released his friends and took a step back.

“Sam, Nat, this is Bucky.” Steve faltered. “Um, they can call you that, right? Sorry, I didn’t think to ask, but they’ve been hearing me refer to you as Bucky for years.”

“Bucky’s fine,” the actor said, stepping forward to shake hands with Natasha and Sam. “Talks about me a lot, does he?”

Natasha snorted and Sam opened his mouth, eyes sparkling with mischief, but Steve cleared his throat loudly. His cheeks were adorably pink.

“We should really get back to the car,” he said. “For the sake of security and all.”

“Sure, Agent Rogers,” Sam said, smirking. “Anything for security.”

He winked at Bucky as Steve turned to lead them toward the exit. Bucky grinned back, already feeling at ease.

“I can take that, Natasha,” he offered as they walked, gesturing to the suitcase that the woman was pulling behind her.

“Thanks, but I’ve got it,” she told him. “I’m sure Sam would let you take his though. We wouldn’t want him to throw out his back again.”

“That was one time!” Sam protested. “And my back would have been perfectly fine if _someone_ hadn’t filled the suitcase with stolen _stone_ artifacts without telling me.”

“I’m guessing there’s a story there,” Bucky said, eyebrow raised.

There was, and it gave Bucky a whole new appreciation for Steve’s friends. Sam and Natasha seemed like great people, and they obviously really cared about Steve. They also treated Bucky like a normal human being, which he appreciated immensely, even if it meant he had to endure some particularly probing questions about his intentions toward their friend.

They were both excited to hear about the plans to go the theater. Sam apparently had never been to a show on Broadway, and Natasha had never been when she wasn’t on duty.

“I thought you worked for the CIA?” Bucky said. “Aren’t they not allowed to operate domestically?”

The smile she gave him was just a little bit terrifying, and Bucky made a mental note to never get on her bad side.

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” she said.

They made a quick stop at the Tower to get the couple settled into the guest suite, which took up the other half of the floor that held Steve’s apartment. Tony was sequestered in his lab, but Jarvis informed them that the engineer had made plans for a private dinner party for all of them, including Pepper Potts, who had apparently just gotten back from a business trip. Bucky had met the CEO of Tony’s company several times, especially back when they were first making the arrangements for his experimental new arm. She was a kindhearted woman with almost terrifying levels of sheer competence, and Bucky was looking forward to seeing her again.

“Think she might be your sister in law someday?” he asked Steve, who snorted.

“If Tony is as smart as he claims to be,” he answered.

Steve seemed more tense than usual when the four of them went back out for their trip to the theater. He’d always been alert and on guard, but now he seemed almost jumpy, his eyes darting everywhere.

“Is everything okay?” Bucky asked him softly as they took their seats.

Steve had insisted on sitting on the end, so Bucky was between him and Sam, who studiously struck up a conversation with Natasha to give them the illusion of privacy.

“Everything’s fine,” Steve said, giving Bucky’s hand a quick squeeze that was safe in the dim lighting. The stiff set of his shoulders didn’t relax though, and Bucky knew that something was bothering him.

“Then why are you so on edge?” he pressed. “I know some people are gonna be a little upset with me, but they’re not just gonna jump me in the streets.”

Bucky had meant for that to be a joke, but it made the worried lines on Steve’s face deepen. He sighed and leaned into Steve’s shoulder.

“Seriously, Steve, whatever you’re worried about, don’t. Even in the extremely unlikely event that something were to happen, we’ve got three highly trained Army veterans, and a CIA agent that I’m pretty sure could make the Terminator cry. We can take a homophobic asshole or two.”

He stared earnestly at his boyfriend until Steve let out a long breath and finally relaxed a little, managing a smile.

“Okay, tough guy,” he said. “But you should know that I’m never gonna stop worrying about you.”

The tender way he said it made warmth bloom in Bucky’s stomach. _God_ he was looking forward to the day that he could kiss Steve without worrying about who might see.

“What is this show even about?”

Sam’s skeptical voice interrupted Bucky’s internal struggle for self-control. He looked over to see the man staring down at his playbill, eyebrows raised. The words ‘Kinky Boots’ were splashed across the front in glittering red letters, the K formed by a pair of sparkly red boots. Bucky grinned. He had never actually seen the show before, but he knew what it was about.

“Just wait and see,” he said. “It got great reviews. You’re gonna love it.”

“Okay, but just how kinky are we talking here?”

*****

The show really was good, and it managed to distract Steve from his worry for two whole hours. But as soon as they were out of the secure confines of the theater, he remembered his conversation with Clint. The agent had called while they were at the Tower, and Steve had managed to duck away while Bucky was talking to Nat and Sam. Clint’s voice had been serious, and Steve had worried briefly that he was about to get fired.

“Relax, Rogers,” Clint had told him after he’d asked if he did something wrong. “Well actually, _don’t_ relax, but you’re still not getting fired. I assume that James has been staying off the internet like I told him to?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t want to get into all that.”

“Well, he’s getting a lot of support online, which is obviously good. But there’s also a lot of negativity.”

“Well, we expected that,” Steve reasoned. “Bucky’s not going to let it get to him.”

“It’s not so much his psyche that I’m worried about,” Clint told him. “He’s been getting death threats.”

Steve’s fingers tightened on his phone, but he forced himself not to overreact. Lots of actors got death threats, for one reason or another. People almost never tried to go through with them.

“Any specific ones that I should be worried about?” he asked. Clint snorted.

“None of them have _been_ specific,” he said. “And most of them are probably nothing to worry about. It seems like some assholes make a career out of death threats that they don’t back up. But it’s not just the homophobes. Did James tell you that he’s competing with Brock Rumlow for a part in an upcoming movie?”

“Yeah, he mentioned that.”

“Well, Rumlow’s got some of the craziest fans I’ve ever seen in my time in the business, and some of them are making threats too. They’re saying that James doesn’t deserve the part because he’s queer.”

“Um…”

“Yes, I understand the irony, believe me,” Clint said dryly. “And it’s probably nothing to worry about, but as James’ bodyguard, I felt you needed to know.”

“I understand,” Steve assured him. “I’ll take extra care.”

“I’m sure you will. If you care even half as much about James as he obviously cares about you, I know there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to keep him safe.”

Steve blinked, not sure what to say to that. It didn’t matter, because Clint kept talking.

“And I have to ask – James said that revealing your identity is going to cause a buzz, but he didn’t have time for an explanation. I’d really love one now though. Is there something big I should know about?”

A lifetime’s worth of caution made Steve hesitate for a moment, but he supposed that Clint really did deserve a heads-up.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “The thing is, I was adopted by Howard and Maria Stark when I was seventeen. Which makes me Tony Stark’s brother. Bucky and I are staying in Stark Tower because it’s where I live.”

There was a long beat of silence from the other end of the line. Then Clint just let out a low whistle. Steve could imagine him shaking his head.

“Well, you sure do keep life interesting, Rogers,” he said. “Okay, I am definitely behind your decision to wait for that little bombshell reveal. I assume Stark Industries will be coordinating the press release?”

“Oh. Uh, probably,” Steve said.

“You haven’t thought about that, have you?”

“Not really.” Steve didn’t want to let on how freaked out he was by the term ‘press release.’ He knew that Pepper would take care of it though. After a career spent looking after Tony, this would be nothing for her.

“Well, I have a few numbers for SI people. We’ll get it sorted out.”

“I’m sorry for all of the trouble you’re going through,” Steve said. It was true. Grateful as he was for the way things had played out, he knew that it was going to put a lot of strain on the agent.

“Oh, we’ll make it work,” Clint said. “At least no one will give James any crap for dating a nobody.”

“Thanks…?”

“Oh, not that – whatever. Sorry. But you’ve been good for him, Steve, really good. That’s worth whatever inconvenience we have to go through.”

“Thanks,” Steve said again, more genuine this time.

“Yeah. Anyway, just remember what I said, and be careful. Maria Hill is the woman in charge of security for tomorrow’s premiere. She’ll call you later to go over the details. It’s going to be the craziest thing you’ve dealt with so far, but you’ll be fine.”

Steve did not feel fine. He felt jumpy and on edge, because as much as he and Clint had tried to downplay their worry, even one death threat towards Bucky was too many, and it sounded like he was getting a hell of a lot more than one. And while Steve knew intellectually that everything was probably going to be absolutely fine, the heart that had always belonged to Bucky refused to let him let go of his fear.

Bucky asked him again after the show what was wrong, and Steve put some serious effort into his poker face. There was no reason for Bucky to be worried as well, not when this was probably nothing serious, not when Steve would never let anything happen to him. Bucky didn’t seem entirely satisfied by his assurances that everything was fine, but he let it go. Steve could tell that Natasha had noticed too, but she just fixed him with the look that meant they would be talking later, whether he liked it or not.

Steve drove them all back to the Tower so that they could get ready for dinner. He was relieved and pleased by how well Bucky was already getting along with Sam and Natasha. He seemed more at ease with them than he did with most people, maybe because they treated him like a person, not a celebrity. He rewarded them by not bothering with his public mask. Steve could tell that his friends genuinely liked Bucky. He knew how they acted around partners that they disapproved of, thanks to a certain disastrous double date that was never to be mentioned again, and that wasn’t happening here.

As expected, Natasha stopped him before he could follow their boyfriends off the elevator onto their floor. Bucky looked back at them suspiciously, but Sam just slung an arm around his shoulders and led him away, telling him that the other two probably had ‘agenty’ business to attend to. Once the doors had slid closed, Natasha crossed her arms and cocked an expectant eyebrow at Steve. He sighed and told her about the death threats, knowing there was no point in trying to keep it from her.

When he had finished relating everything that Clint had told him, she merely nodded.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said simply. “But it’s nothing we can’t deal with.” She put a hand on Steve’s arm. “I get why you’re worried, but this is where you’ve got to work on keeping bodyguard and boyfriend distinct. You’ve got to keep a cool head and not overreact to this. You’ve protected people who were under threats a lot more serious than this, and you did just fine.”

“I know,” Steve said, taking a deep breath.

“But it’s hard to turn off,” Natasha said with an understanding smile. “I get it. But the fact that Clint hasn’t increased security means that he’s not too concerned, and he has good judgment.”

“I guess you would know,” Steve said, momentarily distracted. He raised an eyebrow at his friend. “You dated Bucky’s agent and never said anything?”

“I was trying to respect your choices,” Natasha told him sternly. “And I hadn’t talked to Clint in years anyway. But after your plane crash, you needed to _do_ something, and since your whole issue with Bucky seemed to hinge on the assumption that he didn’t remember you, I figured it couldn’t hurt to check if that was actually true.”

“Yeah well, I’m glad you did,” Steve said. “Really.”

“I can see that,” Natasha snorted. “I never thought it was possible to personify the heart-eyes emoji, but you two sure manage. Now go, stare deeply into his eyes some more.” Recognizing the cue, Jarvis opened the elevator doors. “Everything will be fine, Steve. But you really should tell Bucky. You’re freaking him out.”

She slipped into the guest suite, and Steve bit his lip as he walked toward his own apartment. He would tell Bucky after dinner, he decided. No reason to dampen the mood of what was sure to be an interesting evening.

*****

Interesting was definitely one word for it. There was no way for a gathering of such different and remarkable people to result in boring conversation. Bucky was clearly comfortable with the group, and he happily participated in the boisterous exchange of stories and jibes at the large dinner table. No one wanted to leave after the plates had been cleared, so Tony once again demonstrated his propensity for finding good alcohol.

A group of people that was more than interesting sober became downright fascinating after a few drinks. Steve, who still considered himself on duty despite Tony’s protests that they were completely safe in the Tower and he could take a night off, and Bruce, who didn’t like to lower his inhibitions, were the only ones who didn’t partake. They watched with a mix of intrigue and trepidation as Tony poured round after round and everyone’s barriers began to drop.

Some things that happened and stories that were shared would never leave the room. Others would be talked about for years to come.

*****

After they left the party, Bucky just sort of wilted against Steve in the elevator, in a combination of exhaustion and inebriation. Steve wound up supporting rather a lot of his weight as he guided Bucky into his apartment, but he didn’t mind. He just got Bucky changed into his pajamas and coaxed him into drinking a glass of water. And if he also tucked him into bed and kissed him on the forehead like a six-year-old, well, no one else had to know. Bucky hummed happily and fumbled for his wrist before he could pull away.

“’ve fun t’night, Stevie?” he mumbled, his bleary eyes struggling to focus on Steve’s face.

“Yeah, I did, Buck,” Steve assured him with a gentle smile. “It was nice to finally see my whole family together.”

That made Bucky smile. He lifted his hand from Steve’s wrist to his face. Well, he tried to. Steve had to take it and guide it the last few inches.

“Love you, Steve,” Bucky said solemnly.

Steve leaned forward and pressed the gentlest of kisses to his lips.

“I love you too, Buck,” he murmured. “Always have, always will.” He squeezed Bucky’s hand and tucked it back beneath the blankets. “Now go to sleep.”

“’kay.”

Bucky closed his eyes obediently, and almost immediately his breathing evened out into its peaceful sleeping rhythm. Steve just smiled down at him for a moment.

Steve realized with a pang that tomorrow would be their last night in the city. They had settled into such a nice pattern here, and Steve’s apartment had felt more like home with Bucky here. It had been stupid to forget that they couldn’t stay. They were flying to Rome the morning after tomorrow’s premiere, and then they were in for a whirlwind tour around the globe. And after that…well, Bucky lived in LA. It was where his work was. So Steve would be spending most of his time on the west coast, and while wherever Bucky was is where Steve wanted to be, he would miss New York.

As Steve ran his hand ever so lightly through his boyfriend’s hair and watched a smile tug at the corners of his lips, he knew it was worth it.


	14. Chapter 14

Bucky woke up to the all too familiar feeling of a head full of nails and a mouth that tasted like a couple of dead animals had thrown a rave in it. He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut tighter as he tried to curl into the warmth of whomever he had brought back with him last night. But the sheets beside him were empty and cold, which meant that he’d either been too miserable to put the effort into picking someone up, or whoever it was had already left. He couldn’t bring himself to care either way.

It took him a moment to muster up the will to open his eyes, and then he blinked in confusion. He wasn’t in his house or a hotel room. He was in…Steve’s apartment. The memories of the last week came rushing back to him, and he almost laughed with relief. He hadn’t gotten drunk at some loud, anonymous party, where he’d consumed as much alcohol as he could just to make it bearable. He’d been drinking for fun with his friends, because he had no reason to be miserable anymore. It felt like a foreign concept, but in the best way.

Still, hangover felt the same, although with a refreshing lack of self-loathing. He fell just a little bit more in love with Steve Rogers when he turned his head and saw a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin on the nightstand beside him. He sat up with a groan and shook a few of the pills into his hand before tossing them back. The water was room temperature, which meant that Steve had probably been up for a while. Maybe because he hadn’t been hungover, unlike _some_ people.

Bucky got up to go find Steve, then decided that a trip to the bathroom was in order first. Once he had brushed the roadkill taste out of his mouth and tamed his bedhead a little, he resumed his mission. He found his boyfriend in the living room, sitting on the couch with a sketchbook and a pencil.

The sight stopped Bucky in his tracks. It had been far, _far_ too long since he’d seen Steve draw. He had forgotten how much he loved it. Steve always immersed himself completely in his work, an adorable little crease of concentration forming on his forehead as his teeth dug gently into his bottom lip and his hands moved over the paper with confident grace. Bucky just watched him for as long as he thought he could get away with, and then he cleared his throat. Steve looked up, his face breaking into a warm smile.

“Morning,” Bucky said, smiling as well. Steve chuckled.

“It’s not, actually, but I appreciate the sentiment,” he said.

“Oh shit, really?” Bucky asked, looking at the digital clock on the cable box. Sure enough, the numbers read 12:42. “Wow. You could’ve woken me up.”

“I figured you could use the sleep,” Steve said, closing his sketchbook and setting it aside. He got up and gave Bucky a kiss in greeting. “You get to face the masses today.”

“Urg, yeah,” Bucky said. “Premieres are usually fun, but they’re exhausting.”

“At least Clint was nice enough not to book you for anything else today,” Steve pointed out.

“Nah, he just wants me to be in a good mood when I have to show off for the cameras.”

“Are you nervous for it?”

Bucky knew what Steve was asking. It would be his first real public appearance since coming out. And there were some nerves, but they weren’t gripping him nearly as tightly as they had before his _Daily Show_ appearance. It was hard to be nervous about much of anything when he knew Steve was going to be supporting him.

“Nah,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it, actually. I’ll probably feel like dropping dead by the time we’ve done the last premiere, but there’s something exciting about the first one. Besides, I’m really proud of this movie. It’ll be fun to watch it with everyone.”

“Yeah, it won’t be much of a chore to watch you kicking ass in black leather,” Steve said, smirking.

“That’s what does it for you, huh?” Bucky asked, snaking his arms around Steve’s neck. Steve laughed and settled his warm hands on Bucky’s hips.

“Buck, you could wear a trash bag and I’d still think you were gorgeous,” he said, his smile light and teasing. “But yeah, the leather doesn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, I bet I could rock the hobo look,” Bucky said with mock thoughtfulness.

He used his convenient grip on Steve’s neck to pull him in for a kiss. They only broke apart when Bucky’s stomach grumbled loudly.

“I seem to be really bad at feeding you,” Steve said with a rueful grin. He laced his fingers through Bucky’s and started tugging him toward the kitchen. “Come on. I went on a courageous foraging expedition to the main floor, so we have actual food now.”

“My hero,” Bucky teased.

He took his usual seat at the kitchen table and gazed out the wall of windows at the city beyond. He thought about the conversation he’d had with Steve right after that first interview. Steve had asked him what New York meant to him now, after spending so much time as a symbol of loss and failure. Bucky had told him possibilities. Now, less than a week later, when so many of those distant glittering possibilities had become reality, the city was starting to feel like something else. It was starting to feel like home again.

“You know, there's no rule that says actors have to live in LA,” he said, still staring out the window.

“What?” Steve asked, looking up from the package of bacon he’d been opening.

“I was just thinking…I've really missed being here. And I really only decided to live in LA because that was what you did if you wanted to be an actor, and it was nothing like what I'd left behind.” Bucky wet his dry lips and finally looked at Steve. “But I really kind of hate it there, and New York doesn't hurt anymore.”

“You're saying that you want to move back here?” Steve asked, staring at Bucky with an unreadable expression.

“I think I am, yeah,” Bucky said, realizing how true it was. “This is home, Steve. It always has been. And I'm ready to come home again.”

He watched Steve swallow hard, and knew that his boyfriend understood what he had left unsaid. He wanted to make a home with Steve in the city that they had both always belonged in. It was what they had been trying to do, fifteen years ago. It was long overdue.

“You've grown sappier with age, Mr. Barnes,” Steve said, and his voice came out thick.

“Nah, I've just gotten better at expressing my inner sap,” Bucky replied with a soft smile, which widened when Steve rolled his eyes. Then he hesitated. “Are you okay with that though? I mean, I don't want to make any assumptions, but obviously it's a decision that affects you too, so I-”

“I'd follow you anywhere, Buck,” Steve interrupted, sitting beside Bucky and placing a hand on his knee. “And I will, because I know your job requires a lot of traveling, which means mine does too, and I don't mind that. But if you think it'll be a hardship to have New York as the place we always come home to after that, I can assure you that it won't. I love it here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And as for assumptions…” Steve sighed, and his warm grip on Bucky's knee tightened. “I know we've only been back in each other's lives for a week, but when I say I'm sure about you, I'm _sure_. So if you want, you don't have to look for a new place in the city. Although if you don't want to live in a place where the elevators are controlled by the whim of an insane man, we can find something else together.”

“I don't mind the elevators,” Bucky managed to get out past the lump in his throat.

He put his human hand over Steve's, lacing their fingers together. Steve smiled at him, bright and happy. Bucky smiled back until his cheeks hurt, basking in the rightness of having a _home_.

*****

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Steve said an hour later, hugging Bucky close to his bare chest and playing with his metal fingers. They were curled up in bed together after making the most of the free time they had left before the premiere.

“That sounds ominous.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not bad, it’s just…well, you’re the hero in this movie, right?”

Bucky twisted around to look at Steve, a smirk playing at his lips.

“Don’t like seeing me as the bad boy, Stevie?” he asked.

“It’s not that,” Steve promised, smiling a little in spite of himself. “It’s just that the hero usually has a much better chance of survival than the villain, and if I have to watch you die on screen, I’m gonna need a little warning.”

The smirk vanished from Bucky’s face, replaced quickly by a look of tender understanding. He cupped Steve’s face and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

“I have a six movie contract,” he said. “You’re not going to have to watch me pretend to die any time soon.”

Steve let out a breath of relief, touching his forehead to Bucky’s.

“Good.”

*****

The actual movie didn’t start showing until seven, but Bucky had to be at the theater by five, so it wasn’t long before they had to start getting ready. Steve, who wasn’t going to be the focus of any photographer’s attention, didn’t have quite as much to do as his boyfriend, so he sat on the couch and sketched while Bucky puttered around and fussed over his appearance.

_“Sir, Miss Potts would like to speak to you.”_

Steve looked up at the sound of the AI’s voice, and then closed his sketchbook and reached for the tablet that was resting on the coffee table.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Jarvis,” he said, waving the device in the air.

A moment later, the screen flickered to life and Pepper smiled at him.

“Hey, Steve. I just wanted to let you know that Tony and I won’t be attending the premiere today. James invited us, but I have an important dinner meeting and Tony…well, he says he’s going to be too busy working on a project.”

Usually a statement like that, which was so obviously a fabricated excuse, would give Pepper a disapproving look in her eye and a note of exasperation in her tone. But instead she looked rather proud, and Steve thought he knew why. Tony was exceptionally famous, and he loved to bask in all of the attention that was lavished on him because of it. But this was Bucky’s day, and by keeping himself out of the public eye, Tony avoided the potential for stealing his thunder.

“I understand,” Steve told Pepper with a smile. “One of these days we’ll get Tony to come out of his softie closet.”

“Don’t count on it. He’s really quite fond of that devil-may-care reputation of his.” Pepper rolled her eyes and shook her head indulgently. “Anyway, I hope that you and James have a good time tonight.”

“Thanks, Pepper.”

Steve didn’t mention to his friend how his nerves had been building all day, how there was a tight knot of tension in his gut. He just signed off of the video call and went to finish getting ready.

*****

“Have I ever told you that you look damn good in a suit?”

Steve smiled at the sound of his boyfriend’s voice.

“No, actually,” he said, turning from the mirror he’d been using to adjust his tie. That was as far as he got, because that was when he saw _Bucky_ in a suit, and his brain decided it would be a good time to stop working. He said something really intelligent, like “Um…”

Bucky’s smirk really should have been illegal. He did a showy little twirl for Steve. He was wearing a sharp black tux that had clearly been tailor made for him and flattered his already perfect figure. The sharp lines and dark fabric accentuated the handsome planes of his face, and the blue tie around his neck brought out his eyes entrancingly. In short, he was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen.

“I did okay then?” Bucky asked casually.

“You look amazing,” Steve told him, glad that his vocal chords had decided to get with the program. He took a step towards Bucky and ran his hands over the lapels of his jacket, giving the actor a smile of his own.

“Is it wrong that I’m just really looking forward to you taking it off me?” Bucky asked.

“I sure hope not,” Steve said, using his grip on Bucky’s lapels to pull him in for a kiss. Bucky sighed into his mouth and tangled his fingers in Steve’s hair. Steve wanted so badly to reciprocate, but he had seen the gleam of gel in Bucky’s hair, and he didn’t want to mess it up. He settled for pouring a little more passion into the kiss than was probably wise, considering the fact that they both had somewhere to be in twenty minutes.

Thankfully, there was a knock on the door before Steve could entirely forget what was so important about the clothes staying on.

“And you call me a menace,” Bucky groaned as they broke apart.

“You started it,” Steve told him, unabashed, as he went to go answer the door.

When Sam and Natasha gave him identical smirks, he realized that his hair was distinctly disheveled and his lips were probably swollen.

“You ready to go?” he asked sheepishly as he ran his fingers through his hair to get it back under control.

“Are _you_?” Natasha asked, her smirk widening.

Steve decided to ignore her.

When they got to the theater, he dropped off Sam and Natasha at the public entrance. They would still get to walk the red carpet and see the rest of the stars, but they had to do it from the other side of the crowd barrier.

“And they get to avoid the piranhas,” Bucky grumbled as Steve led him toward the celebrity entrance.

“I’m sorry, did you say something? I wasn’t listening; I was too distracted by those backdrops,” Steve teased, knowing that Bucky couldn’t retaliate in public.

He was referring to the alarming number of blown up prints of the _Winter Soldier_ movie poster which would serve as the background for the interviews and photos that all of the cast members would be subjected to. The poster featured Bucky in the leather body armor that Steve was so partial to, striking a dramatic pose as something indistinct burned ominously in the background. He was wearing what Bucky called his action hero smoulder. Steve called it his duck face.

Steve pulled out his SHIELD-issued ID and showed it to one of the security guards, presumably someone from Maria Hill’s team. She had gone over logistics with Steve over the phone the night before, since he was responsible for the biggest star present. It had all been pretty standard.

Steve saw Bucky take a deep breath as he stared down the gauntlet of press that he had to go through. The camera flashes were already blinding.

“You know, the Bueller thing still applies,” Steve told the actor quietly.

Bucky swallowed and raised an eyebrow at him.

“What are you gonna do?” he asked. “Toss me over your shoulder and run for it?”

“I’d figure something out.”

“I know you would,” Bucky said, his face softening into a smile. “But I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will.”

He leaned over as if to kiss Steve, caught himself, and then turned back to the sea of cameras and interviewers. His tender smile became something more practiced and professional, and he waded in.

The actor worked his way through the media gauntlet with his usual charm and grace. He talked up the movie, told little anecdotes from set, and handled the questions about his sexuality with unapologetic openness when they were sincere, and with carefully controlled caustic wit when they were nasty. They ran into Skye at one point, and she gave Steve a smile and a wink before turning to the cameras for her requisite photos with her costar. No one else paid Steve the slightest bit of attention, which suited him just fine. He was already not looking forward to being the focus of this kind of frenzy in a few weeks.

Steve could tell that Bucky was relieved when they finally made it through the media to the section of the red carpet that would actually take them into the theater. It ran parallel to the carpet that the ticketholders used, and on the other side was a metal barrier keeping back the sea of people who had come just to get a glimpse of the stars. These fans were making a tremendous amount of noise, especially when they saw Bucky. The actor smiled and waved at them, and Steve thought his expression got just a little more genuine when he spotted a girl dressed head to toe in rainbow aside from her Winter Soldier jacket.

Even through the noise and chaos and flashing lights, the glint of the gun barrel drew Steve’s attention instantly. The shot, when it rang out, was the loudest thing he’d ever heard.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the cliffhanger. And the wait. And this chapter.

Bucky knew the sound of a gunshot, of course he did, but his shocked brain just couldn't understand _why_ he was hearing it now, at a movie premiere, not in a warzone. Couldn't understand why the screams of the crowd had taken on a very different quality. Couldn't understand why hands that were far too small to be Steve's were pushing at him insistently.

He blinked, and Natasha was in his face, yelling at him to move, and he realized that he was just standing there, immobile.

_Shooter_ , his short-circuiting brain finally provided. There was a shooter here. Possibly after him.

That got his numb feet moving, and he finally allowed Natasha to push him back in the direction of the relative safety of the hastily assembled cluster of security personnel at the entrance to the theater. But this was wrong. It shouldn’t have been Natasha herding him. It should’ve been-

“Where’s Steve?” Bucky demanded, eyes scanning the wild chaos of the crowd for some sign of his bodyguard. There was none. And Steve was hard to miss. “Where is he? Nat, we’re not leaving without him!”

He dug in his heels and stood his ground again, growing more frantic as his continued scans of the panicked crowd kept coming up empty.

“We have to!” Natasha shouted, and Bucky’s stomach dropped with a sickening lurch. There was something in her voice, something tightly controlled but terrifying nonetheless. “There could be another shooter. Bucky, please! He wanted you to be safe.”

There was a look in her eyes that he had never seen before, and it scared the shit out of him. It looked like…it looked like _grief_.

_No_

Bucky pushed past her, back towards the place he’d been standing when all hell broke loose. There had not been the sound of another shot, which meant that there probably wasn’t one coming, but it didn't matter because Bucky could see Steve now, and he was…he was…

“Steve!” he screamed, throwing himself into the confused mass of people surrounding the fallen man.

They made way for him. Whether this was because they recognized him or they could tell they would get hurt if they got in his way, he neither knew nor cared. He just knew that Steve was on the ground, and he wasn't moving, and there was a horrifying stain spreading across his chest.

Bucky threw himself forward and hit the ground hard, his knees bruising as he landed beside Steve, but he didn’t even notice the pain because Steve was _still not moving_. Bucky pressed one palm hard to the center of the bloodstain blooming on his shirt, reaching frantically for his neck with the other, human hand. The pulse that beat against his fingers was terrifyingly weak, but it was there.

“Call an ambulance!” he screamed at no one in particular, knowing that someone must have done it already, but not knowing what else to do.

His brain was numb. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He’d only just finally managed to wrap his brain around the fact that Steve was fine, safe. Steve had come back to him after all this time, had promised that he’d _be_ there. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be losing Steve like this.

He couldn’t. 

“Steve. Steve, please.” Bucky moved his hand to Steve's face, still keeping pressure on the bullet wound. “Look at me, Stevie. Stay with me. Stay with me. _Please._ ”

Steve’s head turned slightly towards the sound of his voice, and his stupidly long eyelashes fluttered. Bucky's heart leapt, but apparently opening his eyes was too much of an effort, because Steve just sighed and slumped back.

“Buck,” he breathed, so quietly that Bucky wouldn’t have been able to hear it had he not been about three inches from Steve's face. “You…you have’t go. Might try…again.”

“No way,” Bucky growled at him. “No way in hell, Steve, you understand me? I am not leaving you, so don’t you dare leave me.”

Something not quite strong enough to be called a cough wracked Steve's body, and a trickle of blood formed at the corner of his mouth. He finally got his eyes open, and they were glassy and unfocused when they found Bucky. He managed a small smile, which would have been a lot more reassuring if his teeth weren’t coated in red.

“Not sure I’ve…got…a choice, Buck,” he said, his breath wheezing in a way that Bucky hadn’t heard since they were kids.

“The hell you don’t!” Bucky cried, pushing harder against the wound that was still seeping blood. “You’re a fighter, Steve, you’ve always been a fighter. Fight for yourself this time.”

Steve didn’t answer, just stared up at him with that tiny smile on his bloodstained lips. He didn’t look particularly bothered by the fact that there was a hole in his chest, spilling his lifeblood all over the sidewalk. But Bucky was bothered. Bucky was _really damn_ bothered.

Steve’s eyes slid out of focus again and drifted shut. A strangled, inhuman sound tore its way out of Bucky’s throat, and he gave Steve a gentle but desperate shake, careful to keep as much pressure as he could against the wound.

“Don’t you fucking die on me, Rogers,” he growled. “I can’t do this again. I can’t take it. Stevie, please. Steve. Steve!”

But Steve’s head just lolled on the concrete, his beautiful face pale and still as death, his body limp beneath Bucky’s hands. And then other hands were tugging at Bucky’s shoulders, trying to pull him away.

“No!” he shouted, throwing himself over Steve. He had to protect him.

“Bucky, the paramedics are here to help him, you’ve got to let them through.” The voice belonged to Sam. Sam, who Bucky had only known for a day, but who Steve trusted with his life.

Bucky allowed himself to be tugged away, but only far enough for the newly arrived paramedics and EMTs to get to the injured man.

“We need to get you out of the open,” Natasha said in Bucky’s ear, and he turned to glower at her.

“I am not leaving him,” he growled. _Not again_.

She just looked at him, her green eyes too bright behind a film of what she wouldn’t allow to become tears. She seemed to understand that she would have to knock him out to get him to go anywhere, and apparently she wasn’t ready to take that step. Especially since she cared about Steve too, and couldn't want to leave him, just lying there, horrifyingly motionless as the team of medical personnel worked over him.

Bucky couldn’t breathe, watching it. Steve remained utterly unresponsive, and Bucky felt like he was underwater, sound reaching him in unsteady bursts and snatches. The paramedics fired words at each other that he didn’t completely understand, but knew weren’t good. They were trying to control the bleeding from Steve’s chest, but it just kept coming and coming until it seemed like everything was stained red.

They got Steve onto a stretcher, and Bucky only realized that Sam was still holding onto him when his grip tightened, preventing Bucky from rushing after the gurney as the paramedics wheeled it towards the ambulance waiting at the end of the red carpet.

“I have to go with him!” Bucky insisted, shrugging out of Sam’s grip.

“You’ll just get in the way if you try to go in the ambulance,” Natasha told him bluntly. “We will take you to the hospital, but you can’t go with him.”

Bucky knew that she was right, and he hated it, hated leaving Steve with strangers. He had to fight the urge to chase the ambulance on foot as the doors slammed closed and it pulled away with its sirens wailing.

“We’ve secured the shooter,” said a new voice, and Bucky turned. Anger flared through him when he recognized Maria Hill.

“You were supposed to be in charge of security!” he screamed at her. “You were supposed to make sure it was _safe_!”

She flinched a little, but her expression remained steady, professional.

“I can only make things as safe as possible,” she told him. “But like I said, we’ve secured the shooter. She’s not going to be able to hurt anyone else.”

Did she honestly think that could make up for the fact that someone had already gotten hurt? The most important someone in Bucky’s world?

He didn’t trust himself to respond, so he just rounded on Natasha.

“Hospital,” he barked.

“I’ll arrange a car for you,” Hill said before Natasha could reply. She flagged down one of the security guys milling about. “Ward will take you.”

The young agent that she had summoned led them into the theater, where a confused crowd was milling about. They were quickly ducking out of a side exit though, into an adjoined parking garage where several shiny black cars were parked.

Bucky hadn’t realized just how chaotic the scene had been until everything was quiet. The sudden silence made it far too easy to think. Steve’s face flashed in his mind again, empty and white, stark against the red of the carpet, of his own blood.

He let out a shuddering breath that bordered on a sob, and Natasha grabbed his arm in a too-tight grip. It was the only indication that she was as scared as he was.

They all piled into one of the SUV’s, Bucky instinctively avoiding the passenger seat. Natasha took it instead, and Sam sat with Bucky in the back.

“He was talking to me,” Bucky mumbled as they peeled out of the parking garage. Ward seemed to understand their sense of urgency, because he drove as fast as was humanly possible in New York traffic. Which was still nowhere near fast enough. “He was responsive.”

No one said anything to that. They all knew better than to think that said anything about Steve’s chances. Even Bucky, much as he might not want to admit it to himself.

He realized dimly that he was shaking, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He couldn’t stop feeling Steve’s stuttering pulse under his fingers, couldn’t stop seeing those beautiful blue eyes drift closed. If Steve died…the first time had broken Bucky. The second time would destroy him completely.

Bucky didn’t noticed that he’d completely checked out until Sam was shaking him gently, telling him to get out of the car, that they were here. Bucky fumbled instantly with the seatbelt that Sam had made him fasten, and then he was tumbling out of the car, into another parking garage.

Ward tried to follow them as they made for the entrance to the hospital, but a few quiet words from Natasha had him backing off. And then the three of them were striding into the emergency department, where they made for the nurse at the central desk. The way the her eyes widened when she saw Bucky might have been comical under other circumstances.

“Sir – Mr. Barnes, are you injured?” she asked, staring up at him.

Bucky realized for the first time that he was covered in blood. Steve’s blood.

“No,” he said shortly, his throat closing around the word. “I need to know about Steve Rogers. He was just brought in with a – a gunshot wound to the chest.”

Bucky’s own chest felt like it was on fire with anxiety that was trying very hard not to become grief. The nurse just gaped at him for another moment, but she pulled herself together and started tapping at her keyboard.

“Um, there’s no status listed,” she said after a moment, looking up nervously.

“But he was alive when he got here?” Natasha asked before Bucky could get his vocal chords to work.

“Well, he’s not listed as a DOA, so presumably.” The nurse glanced back down at her computer screen. “Oh, it says he’s in surgery.”

In surgery meant alive. Steve was still alive.

Bucky took a breath for what felt like the first time since watching the ambulance doors slamming shut. His knees buckled a little, but then Sam’s strong hand was under his elbow, steadying him.

“Um, it looks like Mr. Rogers is in critical condition, but he’s got Dr. Parker working on him, and he’s very good,” the nurse went on.

She was probably trying to be reassuring, but Bucky had stopped listening after ‘critical condition.’

“How soon will we know anything?” Sam asked, his voice strained.

“Hard to say,” the nurse hedged. Her gaze kept flicking back to Bucky, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“How about a guess?” Natasha invited icily.

“I honestly don’t know anything about the case,” the nurse said, quailing under Natasha’s glare. “But you might have better luck with the EMS providers that brought him in. They’ll probably be coming out any minute.”

She looked relieved when the doors to the actual ER opened and a blonde woman in a paramedic’s uniform stepped out. Her face was vaguely familiar, which meant that she was probably one of the people who had worked on Steve. She was also covered in even more blood than Bucky was. He felt whatever was left of his own blood in his face drain instantly, and Sam had to hold him up again. Fortunately she recognized them and approached, so they didn’t have to ask.

“It’s not good,” she told them frankly. “He sustained massive blood loss, and the bullet perforated one of his lungs. He was still alive when we passed him off to the doctors, but he coded twice on the way over.”

Bucky wasn’t sure what kind of sound he made at that news, but it must have been pretty pitiful, because the paramedic dropped her professional air and let out a heavy sigh, her face softening with sympathy.

“He seems like a strong guy who’s managed to pull through a lot before,” she said. “But he also took a pretty bad hit. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I also don’t want you to bury him before he’s dead. I’m truly sorry that I can’t give you a better answer, but that’s all I’ve got right now. Hopefully the doctors will know more soon. Now I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to get cleaned up and back on duty.”

She gave them a small, bracing smile, before brushing past them and walking out of the room. Bucky and his companions just stared at each other numbly for a moment. Before any of them could think of what to say, there was a hiss of automatic doors sliding open, and the nurse behind the desk let out a squeak. Bucky turned just in time to see Tony blow into the room, his hair mussed and his eyes wild, Bruce just a few steps behind him. The engineer spotted the group by the desk and ran toward them. He skidded to a halt beside them and blanched when he took in their expressions.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered, his hands reaching up to tangle in his already messy hair. “Is he…?”

“In surgery,” said Natasha, the steadiest of them. “It’s bad.”

Tony swallowed hard and nodded, then zeroed in on the nurse, who looked like she was about to faint.

“Tell whoever you need to that Dr. Banner here is going to be scrubbing in for Steve Rogers’ surgery,” he told her.

“Sir, that’s completely against every regulation we have-”

“Do I look like I care?” Tony snapped. “Dr. Banner not only has an M.D., he’s treated the patient before. He doesn’t even have to touch Steve, not if your doctors do their damn jobs right, but he _will_ be in there. If he’s not, I’ll march in there myself. Which would you prefer?”

The nurse swallowed and picked up her phone. Within moments someone was there to collect Bruce.

“I’ll keep you updated,” the doctor promised the rest of them solemnly as he was led away.

“Could I interest you in one of our more private waiting rooms?” the nurse asked with very deliberate politeness. Bucky looked around and realized that every eye in the waiting room was on them.

“I think that would be best,” Sam said diplomatically.

The nurse led them to a smaller, more comfortably furnished waiting room. She left them with only a few backward glances. The door shut with a click that seemed extremely loud in the utter silence of the room. Bucky, Sam, Natasha, and Tony all stood in the middle of the room, ignoring the variety of chairs, barely able to look at one another.

“What the hell happened?” Tony asked eventually, his voice coming out rough and gravelly. He cleared his throat. “Jarvis was monitoring the live premiere coverage, but all he could tell was that Steve had gone down.”

“Someone in the crowd had a gun, and she used it,” Natasha said. “She’s in custody, but that’s all we know. We came straight here.”

“The hell kind of shit security did they have if some yahoo could get that close with a gun?” Tony demanded.

“Apparently they can only make things as ‘secure as possible,’” Bucky quoted bitterly, his voice sounding strange to him. “Which I guess translates to really fucking insecure.”

A flash of light in the corner of the room caught his attention, and he realized that there was a TV set into the wall. The bottom dropped out of Bucky’s stomach when he looked at it more closely. The sound was muted, but it was obviously a news program. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: BREAKING NEWS: SHOOTING AT WINTER SOLDIER PREMIERE. It was showing footage of the panicked crowd churning outside the theater. Without thinking, Bucky crossed the room and jabbed his finger into the volume button.

“-still no definite confirmation on the number of casualties,” the news anchor’s voice was saying. “Although we know for sure that at least one victim was rushed to the hospital, and his condition remains unknown. It’s possible that he was the only casualty of today’s events, but we won’t know for sure until some of the confusion dies down.”

Bucky couldn’t believe the way he said ‘only’ as if Steve’s life didn’t matter.

“For those of you just tuning in, there are reports of a shooting at this afternoon’s premiere of _The Winter Soldier_. There are no confirmed fatalities, but there was at least one serious injury, though not, we are told, to any of the movie’s stars. The footage you are seeing now is from our own cameras, but it only shows the confused aftermath of the event. However, we’ve just gotten footage from several independent sources that shows the actual shooting. We should warn you that this footage may be disturbing to some viewers.”

“Bucky, maybe you shouldn’t-” Bucky raised his hand to cut Sam off without taking his gaze from the screen. No, maybe he shouldn’t. But he had to.

Because there had been so many damn cameras at the event, the video was professional quality, not shaky smartphone footage. It showed Bucky, carefree and smiling in a way that felt laughably foreign to him now. The camera’s focus was on him, but Bucky had eyes only for Steve, beautifully whole and healthy and standing just a few feet from the actor, scanning their surroundings casually. Suddenly Steve stiffened, his eyes going wide for a split second, before he threw himself sideways, between Bucky and the crowd. The footage froze, the news station apparently unwilling to show the actual shooting in its gory entirety on live television. But they had already shown enough.

Bucky’s ears roared and his stomach churned, and he found himself retching into the trashcan by the door. The remains of his brunch came back with a vengeance, burning his throat. He felt a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and knew from the size that it was Natasha’s.

“He…he…” was all he managed to get out before he started heaving again.

Steve had taken that bullet deliberately. For him. He had thrown himself into the line of fire to save Bucky.

And Bucky was an idiot not to have realized it sooner. Why would someone be aiming for Steve? Innocent, perfect, safely anonymous Steve.

“He didn’t tell you about the death threats, did he?” Natasha asked quietly.

Bucky stiffened. His stomach clenched again, but there was nothing left to bring up. He straightened up to look at Natasha, carefully avoiding looking anywhere near Tony’s vicinity. How could he face the engineer when he had gotten his brother shot?

“Death threats?” he repeated in a raspy whisper.

“Apparently you got a lot of them yesterday. I guess one of them was serious after all.”

Bucky’s legs refused to support him any longer, and he collapsed into a chair. So that’s why Steve had been on edge yesterday. He’d known, he’d _known_ that something like this might happen, and he hadn’t said anything. He probably hadn’t wanted to worry Bucky. Well, Bucky was sure as hell worrying now.

“I’m such an idiot,” he moaned, reaching up to fist his hands in his hair. He stopped when he saw that the grooves of his metal hand were caked with congealing blood. He had to swallow hard against another dry heave. “What made me think that this was a good time to put a target on my back?”

He jumped when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out automatically and saw that Clint was calling him. Clint, who had made it Steve’s job to keep Bucky safe. Clint, who probably wanted to go over something as ridiculous as logistics right now. Clint, who must have known about the death threats and hadn’t said a word to Bucky.

“Let me,” Natasha murmured, taking the phone from Bucky’s hand when it became clear that he wasn’t going to answer it. She slipped out of the room, and the silence in her wake felt louder than ever. Sam had muted the TV again, probably as soon as Bucky had started hurling.

Bucky finally forced himself to look over at Tony. His friend was sitting forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and shoulders slumped. His phone was clasped loosely in one hand, and his eyes were fixed on the floor. Bucky wasn’t used to seeing him so still.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky told him, his voice rough from the stress and vomiting. “Tony, Sam, I am so sorry. It’s my fault he’s-”

“No,” Tony said before he could say anything else. He hadn’t moved a muscle, and his voice sounded hollow. “No, it’s not your fault. He _chose_ to save you. Don’t take that away from him.”

“He should never have had to make the choice in the first place!” Bucky growled.

“No, he shouldn’t,” Sam said, coming to sit beside Bucky. “But it’s still not on you. It’s on the girl who pulled the trigger.”

Bucky could not find the energy to argue, and he didn’t want to. He was absolutely certain that fighting with Sam and/or Tony would be the exact opposite of what Steve would want.

They sat in oppressive silence for several minutes. They all jumped and looked up when the door opened, but it was just Natasha. She handed Bucky’s phone back to him and then sank into the chair beside Sam and curled up against him. That was how Bucky knew how upset she really was. He may only have known the spy for a day, but he already knew that she would never indulge in that kind of public(ish) display of affection unless she were in dire need of comfort.

“The shooter’s name is Synthia Schmidt,” she told the room at large. “Apparently she’s one of Brock Rumlow’s most psychotic fans.”

“This was about _Rumlow_?” Bucky demanded, rage and hate and disgust welling up in his chest.

“Apparently he banged her once and she’s been obsessed with him ever since,” Nat said, her own disgust leaking into her tone. “Considers herself his girlfriend, his confidante, even though it doesn’t sound like he’s actually spoken to her in months. She knew that Bucky was the favorite for the Batman part, and she decided to take him out of the running.”

“Fuck,” Bucky hissed, squeezing his eyes shut as they prickled fiercely. “Over a stupid fucking _movie_.”

Steve couldn’t die for this. The universe couldn’t be that cruel.

They all jumped again when Tony’s phone beeped.

“Bruce is in the OR,” Tony reported. “He says that Steve is still hanging in there.”

“Well, that’s something,” Sam said. No one responded, and silence fell again.

The next time it was broken, it was by the director of the hospital coming into the room. He did a double-take when he registered Bucky’s bloodstained formalwear and Tony’s disheveled lab attire, but he recovered quickly. He gave his best effort at schmoozing, but realized quickly that he was less than welcome. He beat a hasty retreat.

Silence returned, only broken when Bruce texted them again. All he said was that Steve was still alive, which meant that he didn’t have any better news to relate.

Two cops showed up several minutes later to take statements from Bucky, Natasha, and Sam. They didn’t have much to add about the shooter, but they assured everyone that the case was being handled with the greatest of care.

The next visitor was far more welcome. It was Pepper, and though her face was pale and her eyes were rimmed with red, her presence was instantly calming. She’d brought fresh clothes for Bucky, and instructed him to get cleaned up and changed. Since he had been spending the past hour staring at the blood drying on his metal hand, he acknowledged that this was probably a good idea.

He slipped into a private bathroom attached to the waiting room, and he was confronted with his reflection for the first time. He looked like the zombie groom in a bad horror flick. His face was pale and sunken, and his formalwear was splotched with blood from where he had thrown himself over Steve’s body.

As Bucky shrugged out of his jacket and started fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, he could not help but remember how he had been looking forward to having Steve do this for him. And then Steve had been cut out of his own clothes by the paramedics.

Bucky choked back a sob and gave up on the buttons, just tearing off the shirt and casting it aside with the jacket.

Approaching the sinks meant drawing nearer to his reflection, but Bucky had to wash the blood out of his hand. He stared dully at the rusty pink mix of water and blood as it swirled down the drain, leaving gleaming metal in its wake. Bucky thought he could still see traces of red in the grooves.

Steve had taken a bullet for him. Steve had bled out all over a red carpet that he never should have been on. Bucky never should have thought that he deserved a second chance with him. He should have been the one lying on an operating table with his life hanging in the balance, and Steve should have been in one piece in DC with Natasha and Sam, safely away from Bucky’s toxic life.

He thought about the look Steve always got whenever he said stuff like that though, and he finally found the strength to turn off the tap. He stepped out of his pants and began to pull on the change of clothes that Pepper had brought. She’d gone for comfort; well-washed jeans and a plain blue t-shirt. And then he got to the sweatshirt. It was a light grey hoodie, with ARMY printed in black block letters on the front.

It was Steve’s.

He picked up the soft fabric with trembling hands and held it to his face, squeezing his eyes shut as he breathed in Steve’s smell. His knees gave out, and he sank to the floor, back against the wall and face buried in his boyfriend’s sweatshirt.

God, he wanted Steve’s arms around him so badly. What if he never got to feel that again?

“Bueller,” he whispered miserably.

He got no response.

*****

When Bucky finally worked up the strength to pick himself up from the floor after his breakdown and rejoin the others, he realized just how haggard and pale they all looked. A fresh wave of guilt slammed into him. This was Steve’s family, here and worried out of their minds because Bucky had pulled their friend and brother back into his toxic life.

“Did something happen?” he asked, panicking as he realized they looked even more worried than they had been.

“It’s been forty-five minutes since Bruce’s last text,” Pepper supplied when no one else answered, and Bucky’s heart clenched in painful dread. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed while he’d been in the bathroom.

Bruce had been texting them with updates every half an hour since he got into the OR, even if it was just to say that there was nothing new to report. The fact that he was fifteen minutes late had to mean that either something had gone so wrong that he’d been forced to intervene, or there was something he really didn’t want to tell them.

“Oh god,” Bucky choked, collapsing into the nearest chair. “Oh please no.”

He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself, but it did nothing to stop the tremors wracking his body. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t lose Steve like this again.

“We can’t give up yet,” Sam said, but Bucky could tell by the catch in his voice and the way his arm tightened around Natasha that he didn’t really believe what he was saying.

The door opened just then, and ice flooded Bucky’s system as Bruce walked through it, looking pale and exhausted. He was dressed in green scrubs, and Bucky couldn’t help but notice the flecks of blood that dotted his top.

Bruce closed the door softly and leaned against it. He looked at all of them for an endless moment, then gave them all a weary smile that made Bucky’s heart stop.

“He’s stable,” the doctor said.

The words were so unexpected that they bounced meaninglessly around Bucky’s numb brain for a moment before finally sinking in. The wave of relief was so powerful that it drew a ragged sob from him. He buried his face against his knees, trembling even harder now.

“He’s out of surgery and in the ICU,” Bruce went on. “I was helping them get him settled in there. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

Bucky looked up in time to see Tony giving Bruce a hug. Bucky thought that he could really use a hug right then too, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“He’s gonna be okay?” he asked instead, because that was the most important thing, the only important thing.

Bruce let go of Tony and gave Bucky a kind smile.

“He’s still critical,” he said gently. “But barring any unforeseen complications, yeah, he’s gonna pull through.”

“Thank god,” Pepper breathed, dabbing at her eyes. She reached over and squeezed Bucky’s shoulder, eliciting another laughing sob.

“When can we see him?” Sam asked.

“Now, if you want,” Bruce told them. “Only two of you at a time though, and not for very long. ICU rules.”

“Right,” said Tony. He turned to Bucky. “Let’s go, JB.”

Bucky hugged his knees more tightly to his chest and shook his head.

“Nat or Sam should go first,” he said. “Or Pepper. You guys are his family. I’m just-”

“The guy he’s loved his entire life,” Sam interrupted. “Go, Bucky. You need to see him. And I know he’d want you to be there.”

Bucky wanted to listen to him. The need to see Steve was like a physical thing in his chest. But he had already been responsible for taking Steve away from his family, and he didn’t want to do it again.

He looked at Natasha, who nodded, and his willpower crumbled. He got up and followed Bruce and Tony out of the waiting room and down a twisting series of hallways, because apparently it was a universal requirement for hospitals to be stupidly hard to navigate. Then finally they were in the ICU, standing outside the door to the room at the very end of the unit, curtains drawn so that it was impossible to see inside.

Bucky suddenly found himself reluctant to enter. He was gripped by the irrational fear that Steve wouldn’t be there, that he would find out that all of this had been a product of his cracked psyche. But Bruce went in first and gave the other two men an encouraging smile. Bucky took as deep a breath as he could and stepped into the room.

And there he was. He was too pale and there was a tube down his throat and an IV in his arm and a dozen wires leading away from his body. But he was alive.

Bucky found himself walking forward on shaky legs, unable to take his eyes off of Steve, as if he would disappear any moment. Bruce pushed a chair to the side of the bed and nodded at Bucky, who collapsed into it gratefully.

“Can I touch him?” he whispered.

“Sure. Just don’t poke him in the chest.”

Bucky reached out tentatively and ran his fingers lightly over the back of Steve’s hand. His skin was cold, too cold. Bucky had gotten used to how warm Steve always was now. He took Steve’s hand in his own, hoping to warm it up, and needing the contact.

“He lost a lot of blood, and the bullet pierced his left lung,” Bruce explained. “That’s why he’s still on the ventilator. The doctors managed to repair the damage, but they wanted to be on the safe side.”

Tony was still standing in the doorway, his face pale and his eyes wide as he stared at Steve.

“ _Fuck_ , I hate this,” he said harshly after a moment, running a hand through his hair. “That’s it. I’m building him an entire bodysuit. A bulletproof, plane crash-proof, _life_ -proof suit of armor that he is never allowed to take off.”

“You can’t just wrap him in bubble wrap, Tony,” Bruce said gently.

“Who said anything about bubble wrap? I was thinking something more along the lines of adamantium or vibranium.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bucky said quietly, tightening his grip on Steve’s limp hand.

Bruce sighed, but his small smile was indulgent.

“He’s going to be all right,” he told them firmly.

“Yeah. Good.” Tony ran a hand through his hair again, looking a bit like a caged animal. “Good. I’m just gonna…I’ll go get started on those designs. I’ll send Wilson in.”

He left. Bucky remembered what Steve had said about Tony hating to see the people he cared about get hurt. And this was the second time Tony had seen his brother in the hospital in six months.

“He’ll be fine too,” Bruce sighed. “He just needs to be busy.”

“Yeah.”

“Steve was the one who got Tony to move away from the weapons industry into more humanitarian development, you know.”

Bucky glanced up, curious.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, Tony designed weapons for years just because that’s what his company did, what his father had done. But Steve just has this way about him…he made Tony question what he was doing, and then helped him find the right direction when he wanted to change.”

“That sounds about right,” Bucky murmured, looking back at Steve. There was just something about him that made people want to be better.

Bucky used his free hand to smooth a few errant hairs from Steve’s face. His fingers drifted down to the medical tape that was holding the intubation tube in place.

“How bad was it?” he asked in a whisper.

“Don’t,” Bruce said softly, resting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Don’t do that to yourself. It won’t help you and it certainly won’t help Steve.”

Bucky bit his lip, closing his eyes against the prickle of tears. So it had been bad.

“This should’ve been me,” he said, and Bruce’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

“It shouldn’t have been anyone,” the doctor said. “Did Steve deserve this? Of course not. But you didn’t either.”

“The shooter was aiming at me, Bruce,” Bucky insisted. “She was trying to kill me because I’m a better actor than Brock Rumlow. _That’s_ what all this was about. Steve almost died because of my stupid career.”

“And he almost died six months ago because of his own career,” Sam said, coming into the room. “And that was his choice too. He’s the kind of guy who’s willing to sacrifice himself for others, especially the people he loves. Fortunately, he’s also the kind of guy who’s too stubborn to actually die from all the stupid shit he pulls. It’s not your fault, Bucky. And are you honestly telling me that you wouldn’t have done the same for him?”

“Of course I would’ve done the same for him,” Bucky said. “Of course I’d take a bullet for him. But I should’ve taken _this_ bullet.”

“And what if you had, huh?” Sam asked. “Maybe it hits you in the heart, and you bleed out before the paramedics even get there. Do you have _any_ idea what that would’ve done to Steve?”

“It’s done, Bucky,” Bruce cut in gently before Bucky could say anything to Sam. “Steve made his choice, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. All you can do now is be here for him.”

Well that, Bucky could do. There was not a force on heaven or earth that could keep him away from Steve now.


	16. Chapter 16

Steve’s dreams were confused and chaotic, full of screams and sirens and flashing lights. The taste of metal was heavy in his mouth, choking him, drowning him in a crimson tide. An anguished voice was pleading with him, desperate, terrified, and Steve wanted so badly to respond, to comfort, to _protect_ , but the blood in his throat was suffocating him, the darkness was dragging him down, down, down…

Gradually, the turbulent darkness began to relinquish its hold on him. Eventually, he became aware of the fact that there was a warm hand holding his. It tethered him, relaxed him before he even understood why. It helped to shake off the clinging horror of his nightmares. He smiled faintly as he remembered who the hand must belong to. The man who had always been able to chase away his bad dreams.

And then the pain in his chest made itself known. It was distant at first, but it quickly became more intense, sharpening into a throbbing ache that made every breath hurt.

With the pain came the memories. The premiere. The shooting.

 _Bucky_.

Steve’s eyes snapped open, and he sucked in a relieved breath when he saw that the hand he was holding did indeed belong to his boyfriend. Bucky was sitting beside Steve’s hospital bed, frowning down at a tablet in his lap. He was huddled in a grey hoodie that was slightly too big for him, one of Steve’s old Army sweatshirts. His hair was a little unkempt, and he looked pale and exhausted, but he was unhurt.

“Thank god you’re all right,” Steve breathed, squeezing Bucky’s hand with weak fingers. His voice sounded like he’d been gargling with gravel, and he winced, realizing how much his throat hurt.

Bucky jumped like he’d been electrocuted, and looked up.

“Steve,” he gasped, his tired face lighting up with relief. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve replied, coaxing his facial muscles into a smile. It took more effort than he was used to.

Bucky just stared at him for a moment, like he couldn’t believe his eyes, like Steve was a miracle he’d been praying for but had given up hoping for.

“Hi,” he breathed.

Steve’s smile widened, and he would’ve chuckled if he thought he had the energy for it.

“Hi,” he said patiently.

Bucky huffed out a relieved laugh, his teeth flashing in a hint of a smile. But then he finally seemed to process what Steve had said first. He choked, his expression becoming incredulous and accusatory.

“Thank god _I’m_ all right?” he demanded. “You realize that you’re the one who got _shot_ , right?”

“I did notice that, yeah,” Steve replied, regretting his sarcasm a little when Bucky’s eyes narrowed dangerously. He cleared his throat painfully so that his voice was stronger as he continued. “But I wasn’t the target. I was afraid they’d get you after I went down.”

“Well ‘they’ was one psycho lady, and a couple of guys in the crowd tackled her before she could get another shot off,” Bucky said, a look that Steve couldn’t interpret on his face. “And Natasha was there like a second and a half after you ‘went down’-” he let go of Steve’s hand so that he could make finger quotes in the air, his mouth twisting bitterly. “And then I was surrounded by about a dozen security guys. _I_ was perfectly fine.”

His gaze dropped and he pursed his lips. He didn’t take Steve’s hand again.

Steve studied him, worried. He was grateful that no one else had been hurt, but clearly there was still some damage to repair.

“You’re angry,” he guessed.

Bucky sighed and let his head fall into his hands. Steve didn’t have to know him as well as he did to see the exhaustion in every line of his body.

“I don’t know what I am,” he told his knees. “I just – you almost…”

Steve gathered that his brush with death had been a little close for comfort. Judging by the throbbing pain in his chest, the bullet had done fairly significant damage. But he’d had worse. He knew he’d be fine.

“It’s all right, Buck,” he said. “I mean, you might have to get a new bodyguard for the rest of your tour, but-”

“If you think I’m finishing that goddamn tour, you’re gonna need to think again, pal,” Bucky interrupted.

“What?” Steve’s voice cracked on the word, his dry throat failing him. Bucky fumbled on the bedside table for a cup of water and held it to Steve’s lips, helping him take a few careful sips. The water was lukewarm and tasted like plastic, but he didn’t mind.

“No, come on, Buck,” he said when he could speak again. “You said it was just one crazy fan, right? They got her. I’ll talk to Maria Hill. Security will be tighter from now on. Maybe Coulson will even agree to come back while I’m recovering. You’ll be safe.”

“Are you kidding?” Bucky spluttered, staring at Steve like he’d just grown another head. “You think I’m worried about _me_? You almost _died_ , Steve, do you get that? Do you understand what that was _like_?”

His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked away, his red-rimmed eyes blinking rapidly. His hands were balled into fists in his lap, but it wasn’t quite enough to hide the fact that the human one was trembling.

 _Oh._ Hazy memories flickered through Steve’s mind. The panicked desperation in Bucky’s voice as he called out to Steve, the raw _anguish_ in his cries as he pleaded with him to stay.

Steve did understand.

He sighed and reached with some effort for Bucky’s hand, tugging it closer. The tight fist unfurled slowly under his touch, and Steve laced their fingers together.

“Yeah,” he said softly, catching Bucky’s gaze again. “And I’m sorry for what I put you through. But I’m not sorry I did it.”

Bucky let out a shaky sigh and squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head until his forehead touched their entwined hands. His grip tightened.

“Fifteen years, I thought you were dead, Steve,” he said, his voice thick. “And not a single day went by that I didn’t miss you, didn’t hate myself for getting you killed. And then I got one week with you, and it was the best damn week of my life. And then you just-”

He lifted his head, and when he opened his eyes again, they were haunted. The film of moisture in them looked dangerously close to spilling over.

“Hey.” Steve tugged Bucky close, doing his best not to show how much effort it took, and kissed him. His lips were dry and chapped and he was pretty sure that neither of them had brushed their teeth recently, but none of that mattered just then.

“I’m here, Buck,” Steve said firmly once they broke apart. “I’m all right, or I will be. I love you.”

Bucky let out a heavy breath and tucked his face against Steve’s neck, careful avoiding putting any pressure on his chest. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I love you too, punk,” he murmured finally. He sat up, and although his eyes were still rimmed with red, they were clearer now. “Which is why if you ever do anything like this again, I’ll have to kill you.”

“Understood,” Steve said, squeezing Bucky’s hand. He didn’t promise anything though. He couldn’t.

Something tickled in his lungs and he coughed, regretting it instantly when fresh pain exploded in his chest. He couldn’t help the little whine that escaped him. Bucky was on his feet in an instant, jabbing his finger into the call button.

“Shit, Stevie, I’m sorry,” he said as Steve coughed involuntarily again and tried to do a better job of hiding how much it hurt. “I should’ve called someone as soon as you woke up. The bullet fucked up one of your lungs. Just take small, steady breaths, okay?”

He kept poking the call button so hard that Steve was afraid he was going to crush it.

“I’m fine, Buck,” he gasped once he’d gotten his coughing under some semblance of control. “Look, I’m still breathing, see? Please don’t break the hospital.”

Bucky looked at him reproachfully, but he did stop abusing the call button. A nurse strode into the room a moment later. She checked Steve over and declared that everything looked good, considering, but that his doctor would be by later to check on him more thoroughly. She also promised to see about increasing his pain medication, which Steve insisted he didn’t need, and Bucky insisted even more vehemently that he did. Since the nurse kept surreptitiously ogling Bucky, it was no surprise who won that one.

“Oh god,” Steve groaned as she left, a terrifying realization dawning on him.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked at once, his hand twitching dangerously close to the call button again.

“I just realized that you and Tony must have both been here at the same time,” Steve said, putting a hand over his face. “The poor hospital staff.”

“Hey, we haven’t been _that_ bad,” Bucky protested. “I mean yeah, they probably didn’t _want_ Bruce in the OR with them while you were in surgery, and it might technically be a _little_ past visiting hours right now, but-”

“Bruce was in the OR with me?” Steve demanded.

“Well, he was your doctor.”

“Yeah, when I was seventeen.”

“Yeah well, he was the only one of us with a medical degree, and we needed eyes on the inside.”

Steve had to work hard to keep himself from rolling his eyes. Bruce had barely even practiced medicine after graduating from school. Still, the idea of him being there for Steve was comforting.

“What day is it?” he asked.

“Sunday.”

Steve blinked, his stomach dropping. He’d lost two days. A lot could have happened in two days.

“So, uh, how’s…everything else?” he asked nervously.

Bucky sighed and took Steve’s hand again.

“Well, the New York premiere was cancelled, obviously, but the rest of the cast is still rolling along with the rest of the press tour.”

He paused. They both knew that wasn’t really what Steve had asked about. The fact that he was so reluctant to tell the rest did not bode well. The way he bit his lip and eyed Steve anxiously also wasn’t encouraging.

“Steve, there were hundreds of cameras at that premiere, and they caught everything. With the way I reacted to you being shot, and then Tony storming in here…we had to make that announcement a little sooner than we’d planned. Pepper and Tony did a press conference, and I gave a short phone interview to Sophie McCauley because she doesn’t suck, and, well…” he shrugged, looking nervous. “The media kind of blew up. Well, majorly blew up. Like in an international news kind of way.”

Steve was silent as he tried to absorb all of that. He’d known it was coming, but it still felt bizarre to realize that people all over the world knew who he was. And this was really not how he’d expected it to go. Still, at least this meant that he had a bit of a buffer period before he had to go back to the real world and face everything.

“I’m pretty sure half the world is in love with you, by the way,” Bucky added when Steve still didn’t say anything.

Steve blinked, confused. Bucky was still looking nervous, but he rolled his eyes and chuckled wryly.

“And that actually surprises you, doesn’t it?” he asked. “God, Steve, don’t you see it? You’re like the perfect hero. Started out as an underdog with a tragic past, got adopted by one of the most powerful families in the country but were too noble to use that to your advantage, became a fucking war hero, rescued your long-lost childhood friend from terrorists, and then took a bullet for a beloved actor. They make movies about people like you.”

“Huh.” Steve wasn’t sure he was quite ready to process all of that just yet. “Do you think they could get Matt Damon to play me? That’d be cool.”

Bucky just shook his head, but he seemed relieved that Steve was making jokes instead of freaking out.

“Maybe they could get Tom Cruise to play you,” Steve went on, aware that he was babbling a little but well beyond caring. “Although he’s a little on the older side now. Maybe Sebastian Stan. People always say he looks like you, but I have trouble seeing it.”

“You do get that I’m an actor too, right?” Bucky asked, eyebrows raised.

“Thought acting was your escape,” Steve said, more serious now. “Not much of an escape if you’re playing yourself.”

Bucky sighed and leaned in, settling his elbows on the edge of the thin hospital mattress. His gaze was warm but serious as it held Steve’s.

“I don’t want to escape my life anymore, Steve,” he said. “Not now that you’re a part of it.”

Steve felt a burning in his chest again, but it had nothing to do with his injury. He squeezed his boyfriend’s hand and tugged until Bucky leaned in for another kiss. This one lasted a bit longer than the first.

“Okay, I take it back,” Steve said when they finally broke apart. “No movie. There is no way I can watch you kiss Matt Damon like that without getting insanely jealous.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asked, his mouth quirking in a sly smile. “That might be fun to see, actually.”

Steve scowled at him and he laughed, leaning forward to press a tender kiss to his forehead.

“Trust me, Steve. I may be an idiot, but even I’m not stupid enough to go falling for someone else when I’ve already got the most perfect guy in the universe.”

Steve smiled, and it was probably hopelessly sappy, but he didn’t care. Then he yawned.

“Go back to sleep, Steve,” Bucky urged him. “The doctors said you’ll be tired for a while.”

The doctors were right. Steve had been awake for less than twenty minutes, but he felt like he’d just run a marathon.

“You should get some rest too,” he said, eyeing the dark circles under his boyfriend’s eyes. “Go home and sleep, Buck. I’ll be all right.”

“Not a chance,” Bucky replied calmly. “You are my home, remember? I’m not going anywhere.” Obviously seeing that Steve was about to protest, he added, “trust me, Steve. I wouldn’t get any sleep if I left.”

Some of the pain and worry had leaked back into his gaze, and Steve was reminded of what he had just put Bucky through. He realized it would be crueler to send him away.

“Okay, Buck,” he agreed with a soft smile. “But promise me you’ll at least try to get some sleep here.”

“Will do, Captain,” Bucky replied.

Steve rolled his eyes, but said nothing else. He settled more comfortably against his pillows and let his heavy eyelids drift shut. Warm fingers carded gently through his hair, and he smiled in contentment.

“Love you, Buck,” he murmured.

“I love you too, Steve. Always.”

The tender assurance was all Steve needed to carry him into a deep, peaceful sleep.

*****

Bucky kept carding his fingers through Steve’s hair long after he’d fallen asleep. He couldn’t stop staring at his boyfriend’s face, his cheeks still pale but tinged with more color than they had been since the shooting.

Seeing Steve awake had helped to ease the knot of anxiety that had been coiled tightly in his chest since the shooting, despite the doctors’ frequent reassurances. Even though his voice had been weak and croaky, it had felt like a gift to Bucky, who had been so scared that he would never hear it again.

Finally he pulled back with a sigh and reached over to pick up the tablet that he’d abandoned the instant he’d heard Steve’s voice. Against all advice, he’d been trawling the internet for reactions to Pepper’s press release. He’d always been good at ignoring the buzz - good or bad - when it was about him, but it mattered so much more to him now that it was Steve they were talking about. He thought he understood now, why Steve had bothered to spend time on online forums defending him. It shouldn’t matter what other people thought of Steve, but it did.

Fortunately, the reaction was mostly positive, like Bucky had said. What was there to be negative about, really? Steve was perfect. Most of the criticism came from people who were just sore that Bucky was decidedly off the market. But there were those who were wary of Steve being too perfect – sure that he must have some kind of ulterior motive. They called him a gold-digging celebrity chaser, which had Bucky seeing red. There couldn’t have been a less accurate description of who Steve was.

Bucky’s phone buzzed quietly in his pocket and he pulled it out to see that Clint was calling him. He hadn’t spoken to his agent since the shooting, leaving that - perhaps unfairly - to Natasha. But seeing Steve awake had helped to ease some of Bucky’s anger. This hadn’t been Clint’s fault.

So Bucky took one last glance at Steve’s sleeping face, and then retreated from the room so that he could take the call without disturbing the injured man. He couldn’t make himself go too far though, leaning his back against Steve’s closed door and bringing the phone to his ear.

“Hey, Clint,” he greeted quietly.

“James.” The agent sounded relieved. “How’s Steve?”

“He assures me he’s going to be fine,” Bucky said, appreciating the fact that Clint had asked about Steve first, even though it probably wasn’t his biggest concern.

“So he woke up? That’s great.” Clint paused, then sighed. “I’m sorry, James. I know you must be angry with me for not telling you about the death threats, for putting both of you in danger-”

“You don’t have to apologize, Clint,” Bucky interrupted. “I mean, I wish you’d told me about the threats, but if I’m being honest with myself, it probably wouldn’t have changed anything. I still would’ve gone to that premiere, and Steve still would’ve jumped in front of that bullet.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Clint said. “Especially since Synthia Schmidt wasn’t even one of the people who sent a threat.”

Bucky shuddered at the mention of the would-be murderer. Her picture had been splashed all over the news for the last two days. She was pretty, in a way, but there was a cruel twist to her mouth and an insane gleam in her eyes that made Bucky’s skin crawl. He could see why Rumlow had liked her.

“I guess she didn’t care about scaring me,” Bucky said darkly. “She just wanted me gone.”

“She’s gonna be the one who’s gone, James,” Clint said firmly. “Stark’s lawyers are gonna make sure she gets the maximum possible sentence.”

“I know. I just wish-” Bucky cut himself off, knowing it was useless to finish the thought.

“Yeah,” Clint said anyway. “But there’s really no indication that Rumlow was involved in this. He’s an evil conniving dickbag, but he didn’t tell Schmidt to kill you. There’s nothing we can do about him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky said, frustrated.

“How are you holding up, James?” Clint asked. “Natasha says you haven’t left the hospital.”

“I’m fine. But if you even think about telling me to get back to the press tour Clint, I swear-”

“I wasn’t going to. I’ve already spoken to the _Winter Soldier_ producers, and they’re not going to make you come back. They know it’ll only make them look unsympathetic, what with you and Steve being the country’s new OTP.”

“The country’s new _what_?”

“The point is, you’ve got as much time as you need. Obviously, they’d like you back sooner rather than later, but they’re not going to force you. Besides, all this has only meant more press for the movie.”

“Well thank god for that,” Bucky muttered bitterly.

“I know,” Clint sighed. “Anyway, that’s really all I wanted to say. I just wanted you to know that everything else is being taken care of. You just focus on Steve.”

“Thanks, Clint,” Bucky said sincerely. “Really.”

“Don’t mention it. Just don’t forget to take care of yourself too.”

Clint hung up before Bucky had a chance to say anything else. The actor retreated back to Steve’s room, glad to see that his boyfriend was still sleeping peacefully.

Since he knew that Steve would be upset if he didn’t at least try to sleep, he went over to the more comfortable reclining chair in the corner and settled in. Even though the nurses had repeatedly offered to turn down the volume on Steve’s heart monitor, Bucky had asked them to leave it as it was. The steady sound of that heartbeat had been one of the only things keeping him sane as he stared at Steve’s blank, empty face and waited for him to wake up. And now it was what allowed him to finally drift to sleep, reassured by the sound of his boyfriend’s life still beating steadily.

*****

Bucky was woken by the soft click of Steve’s door opening the next morning. Sam walked in, raising an eyebrow when he saw Bucky curled up on the recliner.

“I’m judging by the fact that you look like you’ve actually slept that Steve woke up?” he said quietly.

Bucky nodded and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His rest hadn’t exactly been peaceful, but it had been better than anything else he’d gotten since the shooting.

“For a little bit, yeah,” he murmured. “The nurse came in to check on him. He seems to be doing okay, all things considered.”

“That’s good,” Sam said, picking up the chair from beside the bed and carrying it over to where Bucky was sitting. “Does this mean you’ll actually consider leaving this hospital sometime in the near future?”

Bucky glared at him, and he sighed.

“It was worth a try,” he said.

“Has Tony come up for air yet?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. Pepper kinda squashed the whole body armor idea. Something about it being impractical. It’ll do him good to hear that Steve’s awake though.” Sam glanced over at Steve’s sleeping form. “You tell him he’s a national hero?”

“Yeah. He took it pretty well. He wants Matt Damon to play him if they make a movie about him.”

Sam chuckled quietly.

“He’s got a much better jawline than Matt Damon,” he said.

“I would have to agree, but I might be a little biased.”

Sam smiled, but soon Bucky felt his gaze turn assessing.

“You look like shit, Barnes,” he said.

“Thanks,” Bucky snorted.

“No, really. I’ve seen guys who’ve lost over half the blood in their bodies with better color than you.”

“Yeah well, I almost lost something a hell of a lot more important to me than blood.”

Sam sighed again.

“He’s going to be fine.”

“I know.”

And he did know. It just didn’t change the fact that it almost hadn’t been true. Half an inch lower, and the bullet would have hit Steve’s heart. If the paramedics had been just a few minutes slower, Steve would have bled out on the way to the hospital. If the trauma surgeon hadn’t been both skilled and lucky, Steve would have died on the operating table. Any one of a hundred tiny things could have gone differently, and Bucky would have lost Steve permanently.

“I just don’t know how many times I can stand to let him down.” He hadn’t really meant to say it, but his physical and mental exhaustion had apparently done some serious damage to his verbal filter. He grimaced and fixed his gaze on Steve’s monitors so he wouldn’t have to look at Sam.

“God, you really do like to wallow in it, don’t you?”

Bucky blinked. He turned to give Sam an incredulous glare. Sam met it unflinchingly.

“So you’ve had a tough beat,” he said. “I’m not saying you haven’t. But things are finally turning around for you, Barnes, and you’re too busy torturing yourself to appreciate how lucky you are.”

Bucky stared at Sam, but before he could figure out how to respond, the counselor was talking again.

“I lost the best friend I ever had overseas. We took fire, he got hit, I didn’t. I couldn’t save him.”

Bucky flinched.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.

“I’m not looking for an apology here. I’m telling you that I know how you feel. And I’m telling you that if you keep moping and let it get in the way of being with Steve, I will personally kick your ass into next year.”

Bucky sat up a little straighter, startled. But Sam still wasn’t done.

“You don’t feel like you’re good enough for him,” he said. “I get that. It’s a feeling most of us have had at one time or another. But guess what, buddy? You are good enough for him, and what’s more, you’re the person he wants. The only thing you could do that would really let him down is if you let a misguided bout of righteousness fuck up your relationship.”

Bucky just looked at Sam for a long moment, thinking, processing. And, finally, _believing_.

*****

There were more people in Steve’s room when he woke up the next time. Bruce was the first to notice that he was conscious. He looked up from his book to give Steve a warm smile and a wink, and they looked out at the others together.

Tony and Sam were having what looked like a lively conversation about jetpacks, while Bucky and Natasha were bent over Bucky’s tablet, heads together. Natasha had a rather evil spark in her eyes, and she was typing something out on the screen with far too much relish.

“You’ve been keeping an eye on them, right?” Steve asked Bruce quietly.

Bruce just chuckled.

“I’ve had to pick my battles.”

That didn’t bode well.

Tony was the next to spot Steve, and his reaction was a bit more flamboyant than Bruce’s. The room descended into boisterous chaos pretty quickly after that.

Steve was still tired, and his chest still hurt, but he had a hard time caring about any of that as he spent time with his family. He could tell they were all still a little shaken, but the overall atmosphere in the room remained one of relief and joy. And the extra company meant that Steve could finally convince Bucky to go home and take a couple hours to himself, to shower and change and regroup. He could tell that his boyfriend wasn’t particularly happy about it, but he didn’t resist when Natasha pulled him out the door by the elbow with a promise to Steve that she would keep him in line.

And when they returned, Bucky was looking considerably better. Some of the shadows were gone from his eyes, and he looked more himself than he had since the shooting. Steve shot a glance at Natasha, and she allowed herself a smug look. He smiled. He would have to thank her later.

“We brought you something,” Bucky announced, unslinging a bag from his shoulder.

He pulled out a small portable keyboard piano and laid it across the bed at Steve’s feet with a flourish. Steve stared down at it for a moment, nonplussed.

“You think I forgot about your professed toe piano prowess?” Bucky asked, smiling at Steve’s confusion. “Well, now it's time to see if that was all just talk.”

Steve looked at Natasha again.

“Did you put him up to this?”

“Don’t worry, Steve,” Natasha said with a smile. “It’s going to be a duet.”

She tugged off her shoes and climbed onto his bed and slotted herself into a space far too small for her, managing to make the entire thing look graceful. She glanced over at him.

“Ready when you are,” she said.

Steve just shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. He pulled the blanket back from his feet and cracked his toes.

“On three.”

*****

Steve improved steadily with each day that passed. Despite being bedridden and flung unceremoniously into the spotlight, his attitude remained undimmed. There was almost always someone in his room with him, and one of those someones was usually Bucky. He did gradually get better about hovering though. By the third day after Steve woke up, he even managed to leave his boyfriend completely alone for a few minutes so that he could hunt down a soda.

As he was on his way back though, he saw the door to Steve’s room swing open. He froze when he recognized the man who walked out of it. The bottle of ginger ale slipped from his grasp, and then he was striding down the hall, blood pounding with fury. He grabbed Rumlow by the back of the shirt and flung him against the wall, pinning him in place with his mechanical arm.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he spat, painfully aware of the fact that he’d caught Rumlow coming _out_ of Steve’s room, not going in.

“I just thought I’d come by and offer my condolences for what happened,” Rumlow said, eyes wide with false sympathy. “I wanted to apologize for that crazy girl’s actions.”

“ _Bullshit,_ ” Bucky hissed, pressing even harder against Rumlow’s throat and taking vicious satisfaction in the way the other man’s face started to turn purple. “This is still about that fucking movie, isn’t it? You’re still trying to mess with me, to get inside my head, and you think Steve’s the way to do it, because he’s my weakness. Well let me tell you this, Rumlow; Steve isn’t my weakness. He’s my strength. And if you ever try to hurt me through him, we’ll both kill you together. And if I ever see you near this hospital room again, I will tell the media exactly what kind of person you are. Understand?”

Rumlow couldn’t exactly speak, what with the pressure on his windpipe, but his eyes were expressive enough. They were full of rage, sure, but there was a note of fear in them too. He clearly wasn’t used to this Bucky, the one who wasn’t lonely and desperate and willing to accept whatever was given to him. Rumlow managed a nod, and Bucky released him. He had to work hard to resist the urge to punch the other actor in the face as he walked away with one last contemptuous glance over his shoulder.

Bucky took a moment to try to control his anger and breathing before he walked into Steve’s room. He was relieved to see that his boyfriend looked fine, if furious. Bucky must have looked the same way, because Steve seemed to immediately know that he had encountered Rumlow as well.

“You were being generous when you called him the assholiest asshole in the history of Hollywood, Buck,” he said.

Bucky sighed and sank into his usual chair by Steve’s bed.

“You’re not gonna hear me argue,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Me? Yeah, of course I’m all right. That man isn’t half as scary as he thinks he is. I’m just worried about him pressing charges.”

“Nah. I didn’t hit him _that_ hard.”

“I wasn’t talking about you, Buck.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow at his boyfriend, who just gave him a grin that was a little sheepish, but completely unapologetic.

“Seriously?” Bucky demanded. “Steve, you’re in a hospital bed.”

“That doesn’t mean my arms don’t work. I’ve been wanting to deck the guy since you told me what he did to you, and I finally got the chance. I wasn’t about to waste it.”

“You never did like bullies,” Bucky sighed, torn between gratification and worry.

He gave Steve a careful once-over, but whatever he’d done to Rumlow didn’t appear to have strained him much. The only evidence that there had been an altercation was a slight redness on the knuckles of Steve’s right hand. Bucky took the hand gently in his and pressed his lips gently to the swollen area. Steve gave him a tender smile.

“Damn straight I don’t,” he said. “Especially when they’ve been messing with my best guy.”

Bucky smiled as well, maintaining his grip on Steve’s hand as he leaned in for an actual kiss.

“Well I think I know just what to do about this particular bully,” Bucky said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I’m gonna get back to that press tour, and promote the hell out of my movie, and then I’m gonna beat out Rumlow for the Batman part, and I’m gonna blow it out of the water.”

Steve’s smile widened, and it had a relieved edge to it. Bucky realized how worried Steve had been that Bucky was going to let the shooting keep him away from his career. Well, he wasn’t completely wrong.

“And then do you know what I’m gonna do?” he went on. “I’m gonna retire from Hollywood.”

That made Steve’s eyes widen with surprise, and he immediately looked concerned again.

“Buck-” he tried to protest.

“Not because of what happened to you, Steve,” Bucky said, although that wasn’t quite true. “Because of all of it. You hit the nail on the head when you asked me that day on the plane if I like being an actor. And I did, I still do. But I don’t like being a celebrity, at least not like this. I’m gonna try my hand at Broadway. I’ve always preferred the theater anyway. I’ll still be well known, but it won’t be this 24/7 crap, everyone in my face and my business. I’ll get stopped on the street once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week, and I’ll be able to feel like my life is my own again.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked, studying him carefully. “You’re not just doing this for me, because you think I’m uncomfortable with the spotlight? I’m not gonna get scared and run, Bucky, I swear. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you, Stevie,” Bucky said, pressing a light kiss to Steve’s nose. His boyfriend scowled, clearly unimpressed. “I would do it just for you,” he said honestly. “But I’m not, I promise. This is what I want too. I want to focus on the acting, not the crap that comes with doing a movie. I want to live here in New York with you and not have to worry about being gone half the year shooting and doing promotion. I want a life with you without half the world feeling the need to butt in.”

He held Steve’s searching gaze firmly, and eventually the blond nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “But you’re still going to get more famous for a little while, and you’ve got to promise me that you’ll let me stay on as your bodyguard until you stop needing one.” Bucky frowned. “I know you were thinking about letting me go, don’t even bother denying it. But I’ll always worry about you too, Buck, and I don’t trust anyone to keep you safe properly.”

“Better not tell that to Coulson,” Bucky said, deciding not to argue the point.

“Coulson did a good job,” Steve allowed. “But you can’t have him, and since I’m staying no matter what, it seems only practical that you let me officially do what I’m going to do anyway.”

Bucky looked at that familiar stubborn expression, and he knew that it would be useless to argue. He also found that he didn’t want to. He liked having Steve by his side for all of the film promotion hoopla. He liked knowing that Steve was there for him and had his back.

He liked the image of the future that he could see stretching before them now.


	17. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. The final chapter. Thanks for the patience, and for making writing this fic a great experience. I apologize in advance for whatever dental bills may be incurred upon reading the tooth-rotting fluff that lies below.

The beach was packed with people, but the darkness of the evening provided the grace of anonymity and no one spared Bucky a second glance as he and Steve wormed their way into the crowd. Once they found a spot where they could breathe, Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky from behind and pulled him close.

“To save space,” he said, his warm breath tickling Bucky’s ear.

“Ever the considerate one, Rogers,” Bucky said with a smile, leaning back into his boyfriend’s embrace.

He tilted his head back against Steve’s shoulder to peer up at the sky. The fireworks wouldn’t start for a few minutes yet, but he appreciated the sight of the brave stars that managed to shine through the light pollution. He felt Steve’s chest expand with a deep breath.

“It still smells the same,” he murmured, his voice rumbling through Bucky. “The ocean, the boardwalk, everything.”

“We’re the ones who changed, not this place,” Bucky agreed.

Steve’s arms tightened around him.

“A lot of those changes have been for the better, right, Buck?” he asked. “I mean, we did okay, in the end.”

Bucky smiled. He turned his head to press a quick kiss to Steve’s cheek.

“More than okay, from where I’m standing.”

Sure, there were things he would have done differently, time he would never get back. But _now_ was what mattered. Standing in Steve’s arms on the beach that held so many happy memories for them, making new ones.

He closed his eyes for a moment, just letting it all sink in. A year ago, he’d been in the hospital with alcohol poisoning and an aching emptiness where his best friend should have been. Now what had been so painful an anniversary for fifteen years had once again become the joyful celebration it should always have been.

“Happy birthday, Steve,” he said as the first of the fireworks rocketed into the sky above them.

“Believe me, Buck; it is.”

*****

Bucky wasn’t sure if the fireworks had gotten more remarkable in the years since he’d last seen them, or if he’d just forgotten how spectacular they were. Either way, it seemed like too soon when the last of them were fading into smoke trails in the sky.

People began to disperse, many of them heading to their cars or back to the park, but Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand and tugged him towards the water. Bucky went willingly, and they stopped together at the edge of the surf. He tucked himself against Steve’s side again as they both gazed out at the water. He smiled when he felt a gentle kiss on his temple.

“Thanks for an amazing day, Buck.”

They hadn’t even done much special, was the thing. Woken up together, made breakfast together, walked around the city, visited Marie for lunch in their favorite old diner. Nothing remarkable or extravagant, much to Tony’s chagrin. And it had been perfect.

“I just wish you’d let me get you a present,” Bucky replied.

“Actually, I did have an idea about that.”

Bucky twisted his neck to give Steve a suspicious look.

“It’s a little late,” he said reproachfully.

“Well I think ‘better late than never’ has sort of become the motto for our relationship,” Steve chuckled. “But I was thinking this could be my present for every birthday for the next, oh, rest of my life?”

“I didn’t know you had such expensive taste,” Bucky said, wondering what Steve could possibly want that would require that long of a payback period.

“What can I say? I know what I want.”

“And what is that?” Bucky asked.

“Well…”

Steve pulled away a little and took Bucky’s face in his hands. The love and tenderness in his gaze were damn near overwhelming. He felt so small in the face of that adoration, but he was so, so grateful for it.

“I was kind of hoping I could have you, Buck,” Steve said.

Before Bucky could figure out what he meant, Steve was pulling something out of his pocket and sinking to his knees in the damp sand. Bucky’s heart skipped about five beats, and his brain stuttered to a halt.

“My heart’s belonged to you since I was five years old,” Steve said. “I lost you once, because I was scared. I know what life without you is like, and I know with absolute certainty that I never want to go back to that. You’re everything to me, Buck. You always have been. And I want you to be _mine_ , in every possible way.”

He showed Bucky the ring in his hand. It was a simple grey band, with a small square diamond set in the surface. Bucky looked from it to Steve’s hopeful face and back again, and he dropped to his knees.

“Steve,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “ _Steve_. You really want…?”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, but Steve nodded anyway, his eyes overly bright.

“I want you to marry me, James Buchanan Barnes. I really, _really_ want you to marry me.”

Bucky blinked back his own film of tears, because he didn’t want anything to impair his vision right now. He wanted this memory seared into his brain for the rest of his life.

“Then yes,” he said. “ _God_ yes. Of course I’ll be yours. I’ve always been yours, Stevie.”

Steve’s face lit up a thousand times brighter than the fireworks they had just seen. He just barely managed to slide the ring onto Bucky’s finger before Bucky grabbed his _fiancé_ by the front of his shirt and hauled him in close for the most passionate kiss of his life. There was a salty dampness on their cheeks that they would later blame on the ocean spray.

When they finally came up for air and Bucky had finished smiling at Steve like an idiot, his gaze was drawn back to the ring on his finger. He brushed a thumb over the stone, the metal around it warm even in the cool night air. Steve twined his fingers with Bucky’s.

“There’s an engraving on the inside,” he said, and the emotion in his voice tugged at Bucky’s heart. “Tony helped me with it. It’s a readout of my heartbeat. I just thought, you know…I mean you always seem to like listening to it, and you would always stare at my heart monitor when I was in the hospital, so I thought this would be a good way to always have it with you.”

Bucky knew it would be too dark to see the engraving now, but he suspected that he would be spending a lot of time looking at that heartbeat in the future.

“It’s perfect,” he said, wrapping his arms around Steve and tucking his face against his neck. “You’re perfect. I love you.”

“I love you too, Buck,” Steve said, returning the hug tightly. “And I don’t know about perfect, but I’m yours. No one is gonna take me from you again.”

“That had better be a promise, Rogers.”

“Cross my heart and hope to-”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. This story was inspired by the awesome fic [Unwanted Celebrity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2021787), which you should all go read if you haven't already.
> 
> If you're interested, feel free to check out my [tumblr](http://drmcbones.tumblr.com/)


End file.
